


The Heliopause

by princewardo



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:45:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princewardo/pseuds/princewardo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TSN Space AU. Christy Lee is the best cadet pilot the Upper Atmos Academy ever taught - or she would have been, had she not killed seven people and been immediately sentenced to life on a Uranian penal colony. At least, it would have been life if Atmos hadn't found themselves in need of cannon fodder for the fast developing Fuel Wars. Christy, however, has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [TSN Big Bang 2013](http://thesocialbbang.livejournal.com)  
> [Accompanying art](http://speak-me-fair.livejournal.com/352102.html) by [speakmefair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair)  
> [Fanmix](http://8tracks.com/princewardo/the-heliopause) by princewardo  
> Amazing betaing by [casey_sms](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shinygreenwords/pseuds/casey_sms)  
> Technically...this is an excerpt!

**5M 0630 Earth Hours - SATURNIAN GRAVITATIONAL BORDER**

 

They were still at least six minutes outside their ETA when they saw the ship in distress. It was painted the clean white of a new Atmos vessel and marked with bold maintenance symbols. It was also easily spotted against its backdrop: a mass of rusty black freighters that blocked it from leaving Saturn's gravitational field. They were all floating at the gentle pace of the outer ring, neither side budging even a stabilising jet spurt.

 

“What the suck,” Bob said, immediately looking to Christy for command.

 

“Yeah,” Christy agreed, eyes narrowed. “Can you get vid contact now, Amy?”

 

“Trying,” Amy replied, tapping at her display ceaselessly. “I don't know which ship is going to pick it up though.”

 

Christy straightened in her chair.

 

“Acting Captain Christy Lee, Upper Atmos patrol training,” she said clearly. “We received a distress call from an Atmos ship in this vicinity. Please confirm and explain your situation.”

 

The comms screen crackled and came to life. It was pixelated almost to the point of static, but the white flight suit of an Atmos officer was clearly identifiable.

 

“Captain Kaur, Atmos Quality Assurance,” the officer responded. “Our mission was to complete scheduled quality checks of mining freighters docking in the orbit of Saturn. Scheduled freighters refused to allow more than one crew member to board and return, and they have now blockaded our return to Atmos Central Station. We have one crew member in meditank.”

 

“Understood.” Christy said. “We will broadcast this information on your behalf.” She looked at Amy, who nodded, ponytail bobbing along with her movements. She opened a second high speed data channel to transmit the recorded vid.

 

“Is there anything we can do?” Christy asked. “Do you need to be evacuated from your vessel?”

 

The vid screen blacked out and came back into focus a number of times. “No – Captain ---contami-- It is not advisable. They will fire upon us all.”

 

“Received.” Christy said. “We will remain nearby to monitor the situation.”

 

The screen blacked out partway through her assurance.

 

“Their connection is dead, Captain.” Amy said. “Atmos transmissions are in transit.”

 

“Bob,” Christy said, holding her hand out.

 

Bob immediately disengaged from the weapons displays, swinging them into the secure lock of the captain's console.

 

They waited in near silence, the only sound the gentle hum of Alice alternating the stabiliser jets to keep them in sight of the tiny maintenance ship.

 

Christy sighed after a while, resting her chin in her palm. “Any word from official channels yet?”

 

“Ordinary chatter.” Amy shook her head. “The data might be delayed due to radiation interference,” she offered as consolation.

 

Christy tapped her console slowly.

 

Amy perked up. “I have a vid request,” she said. “Oh.”

 

“What? Take it.” Christy said, straightening up.

 

“It's the blockade.” Amy said, opening the connection.

 

“Acting Captain Christy Lee, Upper Atmos patrol training,” Christy said automatically. “We received a distress call from an Atmos ship in this vicinity. Please confirm and explain your situation.”

 

A humanoid buzzed into view through the static, half their face outside of the screen. “Received,” they said agreeably. “No Atmos ship will be permitted passage in or out of Saturnian space. The occupants of that ship will not be leaving.”

 

“Can I ask why?” Christy replied, narrowing her eyes.

 

The humanoid shrugged. “We're onto your slimy Atmos strategy. You've been trying to commandeer the fuel industry. Regulate it into governmental caches. We won't have it.”

 

“Whatever your issue is with Atmos regulation, you'll have to take it to the correct department,” Christy said, snidely. “I can assure you that taking government officers hostage will not add merit to your case. I advise you to desist immediately to avoid substantial fines and charges.”

 

The half face behind the screen shrugged. “It hardly matters what we do now, your Atmos agents have already done their part.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Christy asked, leaning forward. She pushed her hair out of her face instinctively, frowning with frustration.

 

The connection cut out.

 

“Lost them,” Amy said apologetically, “Atmos Central is sending backup. ETA 10 minutes. They're in hyperspace.”

 

“This is serious,” Alice said, eyes glued to the dashboard. It was entirely possible that it was the first thing she'd said outside of hand-signing for the entire mission.

 

“Obviously,” Christy muttered.

 

“No, Captain,” Alice said, twisting in her seat, “I'm detecting more ships. Small freighter.”

 

Bob swore. “It's a pincer, Captain, they've sent a couple of their ships to catch us from behind.”

 

Christy set her shoulders back and braced her hands over the weaponry console. She shook her hair back in final preparation. “Comms: brief Atmos. I want the blockade back on the screen if you can get them. Distress call on nearby public channels.”

 

“Yes, captain.” Amy said.

 

“Nav, whichever way they're not hitting us with a ship, I want to be going that way.” Christy ordered. “Slow at first. Get us out of laser range.”

 

“Yes, captain.” Alice said. She flipped open her secondary vid screen and started analysing the incoming ships.

 

“You're my second set of eyes, Bob.” Christy said. “Take the anterior cannon.”

 

“Yes, captain.” Bob said. He sounded nervous, but he pulled the low powered cannon control out of the wall console as ordered.

 

“They're coming,” Alice warned them.

 

Christy flicked off the safety controls on the laser cannons. The cockpit hummed at a high pitch, the cannons warming to usable levels immediately.

 

“Are we moving?” Christy said, voice short.

 

“Yes,” Alice said, “slowly. Ships approaching starboard in firing range within 20 seconds.”

 

“I see them,” Bob said.

 

“No sign of back up, no response from the blockade.” Amy reported.

 

“Received.” Christy said. “Warn them that I will fire if they come into range.”

 

Amy relayed the message, duallytyping and muttering into her comms in common freighter dialects.

 

“They're just about to breach range, Captain,” Bob said, voice cracking.

 

“I see them.” Christy confirmed.

 

She pulled the trigger, aiming for weaponry and engine bays, as prescribed by Atmos incident protocol. The first ship exploded on impact. The second lost a sliver of fuselage and began to spin through space.

 

“Alice,” Christy warned.

 

“On it.” Alice said, wrenching their manual controls to the side hard enough that the engines grated. The disabled ship careened past their starboard side, shedding a spiralling trail of debris as it turned.

 

“Central are here!” Bob said suddenly. He still hadn't taken his hands off his cannon console.

 

Christy nodded at him in approval. “Keep aware,” she reminded them. “Mind the range, Alice.” She checked her own screen, spotting the yellow square that indicated Atmos friendlies approaching.

 

“We're out of blockade firing range- wait.” Alice double-checked her displays, and turned to stare at their front dash like she couldn't believe her instruments. “They're gone. They're dispersing.”

 

“Did we scare them off?” Bob said hopefully.

 

“It's more likely that they saw Atmos reinforcements arriving.” Christy said wryly. She scanned her personal displays. She had an almost clear screen. “How the hell do twenty odd freighters disappear in the space of three minutes,” she said slowly. “More importantly, where the hell is that maintenance ship?”

 

“I-I don't know, Captain,” Amy said. “But Atmos Central wants to open a vid channel.”

 

“Take it.”

 

The image of an officer in spotless white flightsuit blinked onto the screen. “Captain Commander Davis. Starship Atmos Defense Delta. Identify yourselves.”

 

Christy saluted the Commander's insignia. “Acting Captain Christy Lee, Upper Atmos patrol training,” she said. “We received a distress call from an Atmos ship in this vicinity approximately 120 minutes ago, sir.”

 

“What are you talking about, cadet?” The commander frowned. “There are no Atmos vessels scheduled to traverse this area for the next 17 hours. Just your patrol, and you're supposed to be on the other side of the planet.”

 

“They identified themselves as a mining quality assurance vessel, sir. They had been waylaid by a large fleet of freighters.” Christy reported.

 

“Impossible,” Davis said, face hardening. “All mining freighters are accounted for in the lower atmosphere of the planet. There is nothing even conceivably the size of a frieghter class ship on the screens.”

 

“Our displays read the same, sir.” Christy agreed. “None the less, there was a fleet. We stayed to mediate and observe, but the fleet attacked, leaving us no choice but to fire on their ships.”

 

Davis turned his head to the side, listening to a crew report. His face hardened further before he turned back to face the screen. “Cadet Lee?” he said.

 

“Junior Lieutenant, sir,” she corrected him, frowning.

  
“Cadet Lee, he repeated, louder. “Do you take responsibility for the actions of your ship and crew?”

 

“Of course I do.” Christy said. She gripped the arms of her chair hard, pointedly ignoring her crew's desperate stares.

 

“Well, then you should know that your actions today have resulted in what my salvage crew are reporting as loss of life of a minimum of seven life forms. You will be formally investigated, and should you be unable to explain this mess to Atmos courts’ satisfaction -” he paused and looked at his dash. Christy knew he was surveying the debris of the ships they had blasted.

 

“-Well, you'll face the full extent of Atmos law.”

 

The grip of Defense Delta's electromagnet vibrated the ship momentarily, and then they were pulled slowly through the debris field, dragged past spinning metal and flesh alike. Bob set his cannon console back into the display.

 

“I understand, sir.” Christy said, setting her jaw tightly.

 

 

\---

 

 

Six weeks out of training, Christy Lee killed seven people, effectively ending her career.

 

That was what the disciplinary committee secretary typed into her official record. As her twelve hundred fellow classmates assembled to board shuttles to graduation on the Central Atmos space station, she was settling into her cold sleep pod on the asteroid-based prison that orbited Uranus.

 

Earth and any of her Atmos satellites were nothing but distant stars now, barely visible to the naked eye.

 

Christy's mom had always told her that she could come home any time she needed to, no questions asked. She'd said it when she waved Christy out of the subway car at the public school platform. She'd said it quietly before Christy's prom, whispered under the pretext of pinning Christy's corsage on more securely than her ham-handed girlfriend of the month had managed. She'd said it when Christy had hugged her goodbye at the airlock of her new college dorm in the lively student district of Upper Atmos.

 

She couldn't say it the day that Air Enforcement wardens lead her out of the court and into the cell transports.

 

The penal colony was hosted on a large asteroid that orbited sluggishly within Uranus's outer rings. The days were short, but Uranus orbited the sun at less than seven kilometres per hour, making the average one year incarceration of most convicts, in truth, 84 earth years. Controlled bursts of data in the form of mail dispatches made it through regularly, but once families became aware of the reality of their loss, vid files tended to taper off.

 

Christy didn't receive any mail during her first 500 Uranian days. She did what she was told, completing her shifts of offline data entry without argument. Ten hours of data, punctuated by meals and exercise, seven hours of pitch black sleep, rest days once every 10 rotations. It was a lot like the life most Earth graduates expected post-college.

 

Upper Atomos grads though...

 

Sometimes Christy dreamed about ships. Sleek silver ships with bitingly cold fuselage, and that perfect toasty warm spot on the bridge directly above the engine bay.

 

The way it felt to command the jump into hyperspace, and to see her crew smoothly palm the controls into their places. The smile her navigators would send her when they were thinking exactly in accordance, emerging at the precise location indicated on their assignment slips. The way thirty freshmen on work experience would salute her as she disembarked through the airlock and headed into debriefing. The ease with which an admin would happily check access codes to a leisure shuttle onto her data chip, and wave her off for extended shore leave.

 

Christy had jolted her way through the heliosphere at low speed, shields on high against the ionic wind.

 

“I wanna pop that heliosheath,” she'd joked to her crew, a bunch of overzealous ensigns as excited as her.

 

No traveller would call cruising the heliosphere fun. It was nauseating in general, a real suck of shield power, and deeply unnerving at best. Most interstellar travellers opted to jump into hyperspace as soon as they got out of the high traffic areas, bypassing the coronal winds entirely.

 

UAtmos kids would do it for the hell of it. Retracing the steps of Voyager 1 was pretty much a freshman initiation. You hadn't lived if you hadn't taken on the heliosphere at low power, breathlessly watching the magnetometer for the flip, listening for the heliopause. It never happened – the heliosphere was too wide to cross in even an extended period of shore leave. Everyone knew that, but it was nice to pretend.

 

It was nice to pretend in the dark of her cell pod too. She pretended that she was in cryogenesis, with every breath the rushing air of months passing by, years skipping, planets turning and her enemies rotting, crippled by the ravages of age. One day she would step out of this pod, out of this prison; a fraction older, a century stronger, ready to fly again.

 

Christy's mom sent a vid eventually. She looked like Christy felt: angry. Simmering under the surface. Eyes rimmed red, her thin white hands clenched in her lap.

 

“I love you, honey,” her mom said, calmer than she looked. That was typical of her mother.

 

“I love you, mom,” Christy said, even though her outgoing vid privileges were not yet enabled. Her mom wouldn't be hearing from her for a long time.

 

“Christy, I have no advice to give you. You've always been clever, I know you will be fine – as fine as you can be in a penal colony.”

 

Her mom swallowed visibly. “You're resourceful. You'll do well. Find a way.” she said, eyes bright and hard in the light of the screen she was speaking to. “You can always come home,” she said slowly, enunciating. “You can always come home.”

 

The video cut out there, plunging the pod back into darkness. Christy prodded the screen to no avail. Only one vid view permitted per cycle.

 

She watched the vid again the next day, and every night after that before she went to sleep. Sometimes she dreamed about her mother saying different things – always heartfelt but pedestrian. “You're a smart young woman,” “You'll always be my daughter”, “Lee children have never failed yet”, all the encouraging quips she remembered from her childhood.

 

\---

 

The data entry changed one day – it was usually solely provisions and life support calculations for the upkeep of the colony.

 

“What is this?” she asked her warden as she walked through on her first pass of the day.

 

“You should be typing,” the warden said automatically, but she leaned forward. Christy didn't make a habit of asking questions about her work. “Calculations,” she answered, squinting at it briefly. “Just do the checks, see that it adds up, insert the requested changes. Get on with it, Lee.”

 

Christy jabbed the screen, “No, I know what I'm doing with it. I'm asking you what the hell we're doing requisitioning forty times the usual amount of fuel, an Earth-orbit stock of army grade rations, and four anti-aircraft laser weapons? Last time I checked, the point of a penal colony was to keep people in captivity, not to dig in and destroy all approaching spacecraft.”

 

The warden looked at her, lips tight. “Out of your jurisdiction, convict. Just get the work done. No funny business.”

 

Christy huffed, tossed her head, and settled back until the warden marched off, no doubt to report her backchat.

 

She completed the forms without incident, careful not to leave anything amiss. They'd certainly be checking her work after she'd drawn attention to herself. She just hadn't been able to contain her incredulity. The supplies they were drawing were textbook, straight out of the Upper Atmos manuals.

Supplies recommended should a small spaceport, asteroid, or planetary colony face the likelihood of interplanetary conflict.

 

Convicts weren't party to current events or news updates, but if the hunch that Christy was getting was correct, then she knew war was imminent.

 

She also knew the specialised requirements of penal colonies in the even of war. Jailed pilots would be requisitioned for the penal battalion.

 

It was practically certain death, but Atmos only had so many pilots, and Christy had been the best once. She was still the best. If any convict pilot was likely to walk out of a penal battalion alive, it would be her.

 

She didn't mention her work again, merely watched all the requisitions go through every day, correcting anything out of line.

 

She watched her mom's vid every night, dreaming about space again, dreaming that the asteroid broke free of Uranus' grip, floating out into open space, crossing Pluto's crooked orbit, sailing silently between Kerebos and Styx like ships passing on a deathly sea route.

 

 

Then she received a heavily censored vid from a schoolmate she'd mentored for two years.

 

Alice looked older than Christy now, which was frightening. She couldn't be older than twenty three, but she was had a deeply burned tan now, the skin around her eyes and lips dry and crinkled. From the shade, she'd clearly she'd spent a lot of time around Mercury lately, but there was no way that basic Mercurian solar exposure could do this level of damage without some kind of critical shields failure having occurred.

 

That kind of horror story would never have occurred with Christy at the helm.

 

Alice smiled in the vid, but didn't look at the lens. She seemed more nervous about how she looked than the messages she was conveying. Christy wished she could send a vid back.

 

Entire sentences were blanked, to the point that the vid was almost pointless. They'd even fuzzed out Alice's mouth so Christy couldn't lip-read the blanked words. The gist was that most of their fellow classmates were doing well. Amy was going to have a baby to some loser. Professor Thiel had died in a tragic freighter collision on an expedition he'd been contracted to help coordinate. Luckily, he'd died instantly.

 

Christy's chest twisted as she listened, watching Alice's hands tense up and flex in her lap, as she consoled her with that aspect. A quick death was nice. Much nicer than melanoma slowly eating away at your flesh.

 

She only watched Alice's vid a few times, slower now than she used to be at reading Atmos undergrad sign language. However, Alice's hands were as quick as ever, and she was still a master of natural pauses. No one but an Atmos grad of their class years would realise that she was conveying a second message with her hands.

 

War was inevitable, she reported with her hands, hesitantly. Thiel's death was no accident, he had been working on strategic flight paths for Atmos gas supplies.

 

Several operations were not content to share with Atmos-funded mining operations, and demanded that Atmos pay them as “first settlers” to retrieve the gases that all planetary settlements under Atmos government required to live. Tensions were escalating very quickly, Alice signed.

 

She paused for a moment, telling Christy about Thiel's painless death with her voice, and resumed her final stilted hand signals. Every gas planet was considered a danger zone, Alice signed, whether or not they were being currently mined. Atmos would likely be mobilising all the pilots they could find to defend gas caches.

 

Be ready, she signed, smiling tremulously and using her last hand flourish to end the recording.

 

Christy streamlined her exercise routine in the tiny prisoner's gym, and ran over flight procedures and all the wartime recommendation statutes she could remember from her training. Other convicts avoided her in the messhall more than ever, put off by her blank stare. She only had eyes for her work, her sleep pod, and the brief glimpses of space she was permitted through the single observation window she passed in the transit hall as wardens marched them back to their pods.

 

Some days the view from the window was the beautiful black suction of space, some days it was glimpses of small convoys of freighters passing on their way to interstellar space, and some days it was all blue Uranus, the view scattered with ring detritus.

 

Uranus was frightening. It was too easy to imagine that the blue meant she was on Earth in the middle of a stormy day. It shook her.

 

Even when it was too alien to be Earth, she just thought....methane. Two percent methane, and if they came to mine it before Atmos requisitioned her skills, she'd be trapped in the middle of a war anyway.

 

Ten orbits of the blue storm later Christy reported to her work station to find an Atmos officer scanning through her data console. He was in crisp white dress uniform complete with the infrequently worn official cap, eschewing the regulation silver flight suit.

 

“Convict Lee,” he said, noticing her standing there in her prison issue tunic and pants. He tapped her console screen off, pocketing a data chip he'd clearly been copying her work into. “Lieutenant O'Reilly, Penal Administration. I'm here to requisition your pilot services. Do you contest your draft?”

 

Christy shook her head.

 

“I thought not,” the lieutenant said, taking a data pad out of the inside of his jacket. “If you would come with me, I will brief you on your assignment. Do a truly spectacular job and you could find yourself with a restricted pardon.”

 

\---

 

“Will you be able to get this ship into position on your own, convict?” O'Reilly said, scrolling down his data pad.

 

Christy didn't argue with his address, “Affirmative, sir, the ship will be in position before the next orbit begins.”

 

O'Reilly wrinkled his nose, “Whenever that is, it better be in less than six hours,” he said.

 

He clearly had not adjusted any of his timepieces to local time. He'd be gone soon then, Christy thought satisfactorily. “That will be more than enough time,” Christy agreed, saluting with a cheery smile.

 

“Stay in contact with your Control,” he said, “fire on any non-Atmos vessel that approaches the planet or moons. I don’t want to see ring-syphoning going on just because you're too squeamish to hit the trigger.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Christy said.

 

“We will be tracking your comms, and Atmos ships will not hesitate to take you in should they find you somewhere inappropriate. A double conviction will not do you any favours in front of the court martial this time.”

 

“Understood, sir.”

 

“Good,” he said, stepping out of the door.

 

He punched the exterior lock seal and retreated into the port. There were probably a handful of other ex-Atmos offenders being sent on similar suicide missions.

 

The first thing Christy did was double secure her airlocks. The status screens were reporting a few spikes of instability around the main lock and an observation window. There was a stash of sealant in the maintenance locker, likely stashed by the previous owner. They'd clearly known their ship's limitations well enough to stock up on the basic makeshift repair requirements. She slathered the weak points, blowing gently on them to activate the bonding ingredients a little faster.

 

As they hardened up, she kicked the engine up a couple of levels, with the trap door to engineering flipped wide open. There were some undesirable exhaust fumes, but nothing the air scrubbers couldn't deal with. The air scrubbers, it seemed, were the only new equipment on the entire ship. It did not bode well for the condition of the engine.

 

She let it run on, warming the poor thing up for the journey she was about to inflict upon it. In the meantime, she took the crowbar, the snips, and the wire stripper out of the maintenance locker.

 

The radio and vid comms were an old style, the kind that weren't built into the navigation or life support controls. This was exceptionally fortunate, because Christy then jimmyed the comms out of the display with the tip of the crowbar, and snipped all the connections loose. She did not want any nosy Lieutenants checking in of their own accord.

 

She stripped the wires on both the comms and the display bare, and lengthened them with spare wire so she could reconnect at her leisure. Best only have basic radio listening incoming, and voluntary outgoing enabled. Atmos could forget about privately hailing her vessel without warning.

 

She strapped the floating comms unit against the wall next to what was usually the captain's emergency weapons locker. It was predictably empty, but the crowbar and her external lasers would do for now. The engine kicked up a gear automatically, skipping from spluttering straight into a deep warm hum. Christy grinned and slammed the lockers shut. She settled into the captain's chair, pulled the straps over her chest and engaged the solo nav option. The command winched the captain’s chair directly against the dashboard, and the displays popped into reach from either side, cupping her in a warm, blinking eggshell of command.

 

“Up we go,” she whispered to the throttle as she eased it up. She flicked the braking mechanisms off, the stabilisers on, the fuel release regulator on to the launch feed. The engine hummed in a deeper bass, vibrating the dirt and detritus on every surface into a fine blur.

 

It barely took a push to break free of the asteroid's gravitational pull, especially with the gravi brakes off. She reeled back the power as she felt the ship slip into Uranus' gravitational pull. The other space junk accompanying her in the ring was easy enough to dodge, most of it travelling at the same speed as the ship. She let them all drift together, just slightly faster than the penal colony's orbit speed.

 

Soon enough it was just another space rock in her rear screens. Uranus, however, was as blue-gray as ever. The plump gaseous ice giant never left her screens. Christy couldn’t care less what happened to Uranus, whether it be mined or destroyed. From Earth it looked like nothing more than a faint star, if that. Christy knew that she would definitely be vaporising some ships, but it wasn't going to be whilst in orbit with her fucking prison.

 

She pushed the throttle up another notch, taking hold of the manual controls in tandem with the auto aid. “Let's see how you handle the obstacle course,” she said hopefully, flipping the fuel feed shut to drift sideways. Then she threw it wide open, blasting the thrusters into action. The ship leapt into movement, weaving sharply around a cluster of icy methane rocks in the next ring.

 

“Shit, close,” Christy laughed. She almost rubbed a loose strand out of her face with the back of her wrist, before remembering that she didn't have any loose strands anymore. “Weird,” she said, rubbing her patchy black fuzz in consolation. “Phantom hair.”

 

The wardens shaved prisoners' hair every 50 rotations. Christy was at an awkward two inch stage where she looked like the dolls her friends had 'customized' when they were children. It was to keep them nondescript and brief in their ablutions, not to mention cold. Too cold to rouse the energy to rebel. It worked. Space was cold.

 

Christy cranked the engine up, kicking off her standard issue prison slippers and feeling about with her feet on the metal floor. The warm spot was just to the right of the seat. It was worn slippery already by years of heatseeking pilots. No matter who you were in space, if you were humanoid you sought heat. That never changed.

 

Christy flipped the ship around a couple more clusters, building up enough speed and precedent for the navigation computer to understand how and when to do it without her guidance. She settled back and watched the dash blur and clear over and over, the gray mass of Uranus becoming nothing more than the stormy Earth sky from her memories.

 

She dozed for a couple of Earth hours, woken frequently enough by the cold to check the speedometer and their position in orbit. It was a good three hours before Lieutenant Roberts' deadline when the ship met both optimal speed and the exact curvature of orbit that Christy had been waiting for. The calculation warning filled the screen with a minute countdown to prepare. Christy sat up and flicked it onto a side screen.

 

“It's been a long time since I did this,” she warned the controls, hands poised over the succession of switches she was going to have to manipulate. “You can't hate me if I don't get the angle quite right. I don't want to hear any groaning metal, got it?”

 

The controls bleeped agreeably as she pushed the thrusters up slowly, approaching the last ten seconds.

 

Debris and space dust began to ping along the sides of the ship. “I know,” she said, “I know.” The navigation picked out a straight line that tangentially cut along the rings. “Yes, good, do that,” she praised the controls, slapping the selection with her palm. They jumped out of the ring suddenly, the pinging of debris stopping dead.

 

It was like the heliopause – it was like what the heliopause was supposed to sound like – then the ship shot right back into the rings, completing the tangent.

 

Christy slammed the throttle and the hyperdrive into lock in tandem then Uranus was gone.

 

Everything was stars.

 

\---

 

The first fuel seller Christy scoped out on Proxima Centuri's lone sun-baked planet was done with selling fuel to stingy freighters. There was a sucking price on the wall of the spaceport for a sucking reason. There was a sucking price on the sucking pump, there was a sucking price on the sucking credit booth, there was a sucking price on the sucking invoice. No sucking discounts. No sucking exceptions.

 

Christy nodded along to this barrage of information, head cocked to the side sympathetically. “Can we do a deal, honey?” she said, despite this.

 

Christy knew she looked poor. These days she had the gaunt hollowed out look of a girl used to being much curvier. Starvation in space wasn’t uncommon, but it was a dead giveaway to a fuel seller that the sale was not going to be lucrative.

 

“No sucking way,” The girl said, reaching under the bench for her pistol. “Back up, and get back on your ship.”

 

“Hey, hey,” Christy said. “I'm not talking discounts, you're doing a good price today. I know the fuel business is rough right now.”

 

The girl looked at her cockeyed. “You're the only one who'd say so,” she said, putting the pistol on the bench beside her as a silent reminder. “We don't do deals,” she repeated.

 

“I get it,” Christy said, leaning forward automatically to prop her elbows on the bench, applying her best beseeching expression. “But when I say I want to make a deal, I mean it. I'm pretty desperate, so you'll be the one reaping the benefits today.”

 

She spread the thin shawl wrapped around her shoulders, displaying the top of a grey prison issue spacesuit with a blue vertically-ringed planet embroidered on the breast. She also had a crowbar tucked into her side, but the fuel seller didn't blink an eye. Christy didn't doubt that this girl could outdraw a manual strike any day of the week.

 

“Why would I want to help a convict?” she said, clearly unimpressed.

 

Christy shrugged, her breasts filling out the telltale planet emblem. “I have a new Atmos laser cannon that I wouldn't mind trading in for a couple of full tanks of fuel.”

 

“Scrap metal,” the girl guessed, rolling her eyes and tossing her long brown hair.

 

“New, fully functional, capable of vaporising a full length frieghter in ten ribbon bursts,” Christy smiled, rocking forward against the bench.

 

The girl opened her mouth, then frowned, furrowing her brow.

 

Christy could just about guess the line of thought she was tracing. Atmos cannons were almost impossible to purchase now, barring half melted salvage units. Christy clearly had some kind of Atmos connection. And if Alice's information was any good, any ear on Atmos movements could prove lucrative to those in the fuel business. Never mind that the cannon would fetch thousands on the freighter black market.

 

“I'll need to view it,” the girl said. She slotted her pistol into a leg holster and clambered over the bench. “Which ship?” She slammed down the fuel booth window behind her. “You can call me Erica. Why aren't you wearing shoes?”

 

“Christy,” she grinned. “And penal colonies don't hand out shoes, especially not to kamikaze pilots.”

 

Erica followed Christy back to the ship, which she was suddenly painfully aware looked like a hunk of warped metal haphazardly landed in the middle of the port.

 

“Did you even pay for port rights?” Erica asked in disbelief. “This isn't a designated slot, how do you expect anyone to service you?”

 

Christy laughed, “I don't,” she said. “Do you see anyone worried about it though?”

 

Erica looked around. Christy was correct. There was very little concern from nearby pilots or crew. People were simply getting on with their own worries. Fuel, supplies, brothels, medical attention, crew vacancies. It was as if the disaster of a ship did not even register in their midst.

 

She looked at Christy questioningly, “Why don't they notice?”

 

Christy shrugged. “It looks like a hunk of scrap,” she admitted. “But it's also an architectural thing. There's a spot in most spaceports. You can barely see it unless you're looking directly at it. Some people call it bad design. Atmos calls it strategic.”

 

Erica looked at her sidelong, closer than she had when they'd argued over payment.

 

“The lasers are mounted up top,” Christy said, padding over the dirt floor around the nose of the ship. She jumped, grasping at the inset ladder and dragging herself up. “Here,” she hooked her feet into the rungs and reached for Erica with her free hand.

 

Erica planted a foot on the side of the ship and grasped her hand. She kicked off to gain some momentum, but Christy lifted her single-handed to the height of the ladder. She took hold of the ladder just below Christy's feet, and clambered up the rest of the way so that they were both astride the ship's nose, staring into the barrels of a trio of compact laser cannons.

 

They were all brand new. One still had its scratch preventative coating unpeeled. Erica peeled it off automatically.

 

“You've never even fired these, have you?” she said, staring at them from all angles. “This coating would be melted on if you had.”

 

Christy shrugged, “You can have that one if you want it so bad.”

 

Erica tapped it gently, listening to the high sound of the crystal arrays echoing beneath the metallic surface. “I'll give you four tankloads and meals when you stop to fill them up.”

 

Christy offered her hand. “Deal.”

 

Erica shook it, trying not to smirk.

 

“Feel free to laugh,” Christy said, tossing her head, “I did tell you it would be you making all the profit today.”

 

Erica dropped her chin, but couldn't help obediently smiling at her coup. “Shall we go eat then?”

 

She bought them hearty cauldrons of stew and rice at a food kiosk, handing Christy her own portion to finish when she scrambled back up the side of the ship with her tool kit to dismantle the cannon.

 

Christy ate as she watched Erica take the central one she'd agreed to have, apparently not cutthroat enough to leave her weaponry lopsided. The cannon went straight into a prepaid anonymous locker on the other side of the spaceport before she even considered opening the fuel hoses into Christy's tanks though.

 

The ship was full before the artificial night fell, and Erica retracted the hoses. Christy was still sitting in the dirt alongside her gangway, legs stretched out, nursing the dregs of Erica's stew.

 

“I'm done,” Erica told her. “Usually I'd give you my card but...” she nodded towards the prison material peeking out the edges of Christy's tightly wrapped shawl.

 

Christy nodded in understanding. “Do me a favour?” she asked. “Next time, I might have something else...I need a credit chip. Doesn't matter how much is on it. Just something with a clean name on it. You seem like the kind of girl who knows where to get one.”

 

Erica shrugged. “Could do. Depends what you're selling.”

 

“Could be myself, for all I know,” Christy laughed, dragging herself out of the dust. “I'll make it worth your time,” she said, winking.

 

Erica blinked, her eyes travelling slowly down Christy's body, and back up. “I bet you would,” she said, slowly, her plump lower lip momentarily disappearing between her teeth.

 

Christy shivered. For a second she felt like that other girl – the same girl, really, just from a long time ago – long black ponytail, smooth pink-cheeked face, sleek filled-out flight suit, flush with success. She relaxed into that old set of feelings. Atmos Pilot extraordinaire, with a head full of assurances of safety, success, self-confidence – then stepped back out of it, into her new self. Escaped convict. Lawless, self-serving, covetous.

 

“You better pack,” Christy said, reaching for the door retract button, “I won't be gone long.”

 

Erica blushed and marched the fuel hoses right back to their hooks, clearly pretending to ignore Christy even as she fired up her ship engines and lifted off.

 

 

\---

 

 

Christy did return, though it took her the equivalent of a full Earth month. She was lucky that she was familiar enough with emergency Atmos caches of fuel and catching star momentum to get her into the Alpha Centuri binary system in a jerky set of hops.

 

It just so happened that Alpha Centuri Two's ragtag cluster of volatile planets were the cheapest place in the galaxy for mechanical work, and of course, unregulated weapons. The mechanical work wasn't great, but it was eagerly completed, and the blasters weren't new, but they were functional and plentiful. Most seemed to be ex-Atmos issue, desperately out of date, but completely capable of stunning, maiming, and - in the hands of a decent marksman - killing.

 

By the time she'd cache-hopped back into Proxima's grip, the ship was choking on its last fuel fumes, belying its healthy engine hum.

 

The ship dropped into the port rather than landed, shaking the ground with a rumble. Christy had to alternately shrug and lift a threatening fist at her port neighbours as she slid down the gangway.

 

Erica's booth was locked down when she approached it, and she felt her spirits drop unexpectedly. She looked around at the prices above the other fuel booths, kicking at the dust with her new boots.

 

There was a rattle of metal, and Christy turned to check on her back.

 

Erica's shutter was sliding up, the slender wrist pushing it up clutching a blaster threaded through two fingers. Christy grinned and sidled up to the counter.

 

“You came back,” Erica said, eyes bright in the shadow of the booth.

 

Christy shrugged. “You got a credit chip and a tank of fuel to spare?”

 

“How are you going to pay for it?” Erica countered, sliding a small envelope across the counter. She left her fingers tightly pinning it to the surface.

 

Christy looked at her splayed fingers for a moment, then darted her eyes up to Erica's face. “How about I take you for a nice long ride,” she said quietly, smoothly covering Erica's hand with her own. “Then when you're all loosened up, we can discuss a payment plan to cover the rest.”

 

Erica flushed pink right across her cheeks and down her long white throat, but she nodded jerkily in assent. “That sounds acceptable.”

 

“Great,” Christy said. She took the credit chip envelope out of Erica's hand and slipped it into her suit pocket. “Is there anything you want to bring?”

 

Erica shook her head, just patting her pistol holster.

 

“Anyone you have to pay out, any family?”

 

Erica shook her head again. “The lease runs out next week.”

 

Christy reached out and brushed her thumb over Erica's cheek, smiling when she shivered and pressed into the touch. She brushed her other hand down Erica's side to her waist.

 

“Flight suit,” she noted, pleased.

 

Erica nodded, reaching out to clutch Christy's shoulders for balance as she let her lift her over the counter this time. She stumbled a little when Christy set her down in the uneven dirt floor, but Christy tightened her grip on her waist and held her up until she was steady.

 

“Fuel first?” Erica said finally, stepping out of her reach.

 

Christy shrugged and followed her to the hose bay and then to the ship. She helped slide the delicate hose tips into the tanks under Erica's instruction, and stood back as she sealed the airtight locks and approved the gas release.

 

Christy left her to monitor them, and tried out her new credit chip at a nearby food stall, selecting warm breads and a few soft alien fruits. She lingered over the cases, taking the chance to relax out of Erica's sightline. The pull she felt towards her was almost unbearable. It had been a long time since she'd last met someone she was attracted to, let alone been allowed to touch them. She could only hope that by the time she returned and they ate that the tanks would be full.

 

She walked back as slowly as she could bear, fruits stacked in the crook of her elbow.

 

Erica was crouched in the dusty shadow of the cockpit, eyes staring straight through the spaceport.

 

Christy smiled and crouched directly in front of her. “Hungry?”

 

Erica blinked and blushed again, lifting her hand to accept the food. “I thought I was the one who owed you food.”

 

Christy shrugged. “I haven't paid you for the chip yet.” She kneeled beside Erica, peering down her former sightline. “What were you looking at?”

 

“Just thinking,” Erica said vaguely, tearing her bread into smaller pieces to get at the filling.

 

“About?” Christy prompted, grinning.

 

“How soon the tanks will fill,” Erica shifted shyly, “you.”

 

Christy pushed another piece of soft bread into her mouth, and chewed it slowly. “Oh,” she said. “So, how soon will they fill?”

 

“Almost done now,” Erica said. “I used the concentrate formula.”

 

“Good,” Christy said.

 

They ate the rest of their food in quiet company, hands occasionally brushing as they traded scraps. Erica got up first, sucking the last of the fruit juice off her fingers before dusting herself off.

 

“I'll be just a moment.” She told Christy, moving toward the tank end of the ship.

 

Christy opened the hatch, and sat on the edge of the gangway, legs dangling as she waited. Erica reappeared presently, discreetly wiping sweat from her forehead.

 

“I'm ready,” she said.

 

Christy let her explore the cockpit as she lifted them out of the port. The mechanical work had definitely smoothed out a lot of kinks in the engine, although the hull still shuddered like crazywhen they hit gravitational resistance. It moved beautifully in space and that was the most important thing. She let the autopilot select the furthest black market trading post that their brimming fuel tanks could get them to, and allowed the system to select hyperdrive at its discretion.

 

“Captain's berth is first on the left,” she said, turning in her seat to meet Erica's eyes.

 

Erica stepped away from the cockpit window, cocking her head. “Is that so?” she said coyly, sidling towards the door.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Mmm, what's your ship's name, anyway?” Erica asked, stretching out under Christy's hands. She smiled lazily, tracking her strokes with heavy lidded eyes.

 

“Ah, I see what this is now,” Christy said, peeling Erica's suit even lower, until it slid down her pale thighs. “You just wanted to fuck the captain of a starship.”

 

Erica choked on a laugh, “No! -Well, it's not a turn off,” she admitted teasingly. “It would be a little more impressive if you had an actual command.”

 

Christy smirked, sitting upright to push Erica's suit over her feet and onto the floor. “You're in my crew now, Second in Command,” she pointed out. “When onboard any ship, you have a legal duty to obey your captain's commands.”

 

Erica raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

 

“Look it up,” Christy said, settling between Erica's knees. She ran her hands over her breasts, fluttering down her ribcage. “The ship is named Voyager,” she told her, stroking her belly softly, “and this is your first command.”

 

Erica's stomach tensed, waiting for it.

 

“Spread your legs,” Christy said, low and filthy.

 

Erica's chest jumped, and she lifted her head to meet Christy's gaze, eyes black and dilated. She bit her lip, and slowly parted her thighs wider.

 

Christy leaned in to kiss her belly, and then her inner thighs, nipping gently when Erica's muscles twitched involuntarily at the tickling sensation. Erica squeaked at the grazing touch of her teeth, but lifted her hips higher, offering herself up eagerly.

 

“Alright?” Christy said, sitting up to smile at Erica's pink cheeked face.

 

Erica whined and grabbed at Christy's wrist, plucking at the flight suit she was still wearing. “Please,” she said, pouting.

 

“The proper address, thank you,” Christy said, running a hand down the back of one of Erica's thighs.

 

“Please, captain,” Erica said, petulant but breathless.

 

“Keep saying that and I'll think about it,” Christy smirked. She lifted the thigh she'd been stroking, spreading Erica wider, and pinning her in place with her palms. She rubbed her thumb softly over Erica's clit and down over her opening, smiling when Erica moaned softly, going limp and pliant. She leaned down to kiss her there before replacing her lips with her index finger.

 

“Do you want my fingers?” she asked Erica, stroking softly over her clit with the pad of her thumb.

 

Erica arched her back, “Yes,” she said demandingly, “yes, yes, yes.” She pressed herself down against Christy's fingers. “Captain,” she added as an afterthought.

 

Christy laughed, but obeyed, carefully opening Erica up, one slick finger at a time. Erica whimpered with every in-stroke, twisting against the hand that kept her thighs spread wide open.

She made a unhappy noise when Christy pushed a third finger into her wet pussy, but sighed happily when she went back to two and started to fuck her with them in earnest.

 

“That's good, huh,” Christy asked her, pulling out to rub the wet fingers over her clit before plunging them back into her pussy, firm and uncompromising.

 

Erica whined her agreement, twitching violently around Christy's thrusting fingers and trying to close her legs. Christy could tell that she was going to come at any moment. She redoubled her efforts, leaning on Erica's thigh to keep her spread open, and fingering her faster. Erica sobbed as she came, pussy squeezing around Christy's fingers deep inside her. She stilled and panted for a while, shivering as she relaxed enough for Christy to gently pull her fingers free.

 

Christy eased her thighs back onto the blankets, rubbing over her skin soothingly before standing and stripping her own suit off. She clambered back onto Erica, straddling her waist carefully. She pressed their skin together, listening as Erica emitted a pleased purr against the skin of her neck.

 

“Are you ready to come again?” Christy asked, after they'd rested for a moment.

 

Her answer was an exhausted groan and a bold set of hands nudging her hips into position against Erica's lap. Christy made an approving sound, and rubbed herself against Erica's warm belly.

 

“This may be a moot point, now that I've already agreed to come along,” Erica said later when she eventually opened her eyes, “But where are we going?”

 

Christy snorted. “Nowhere,” she said, running her hand up Erica's side. “Anywhere you want.”

 

Erica smiled, wriggling closer under the blanket.

 

“Earth, eventually,” Christy said quietly.

 

“I've never been to Earth.” Erica yawned.

 

Christy rolled over to the progress screen to check that the nav was still safely obeying autopilot. “I guess we're officially on an adventure.”


	2. Part 2

“You're not going to believe this,” Erica said slowly, squinting through the dash, “but I'm pretty sure that's the laser cannon you sold me.”

 

“What?” Christy groaned. “Do you have any idea how powerful that thing is? I can't outgun my own weapon model.”

 

“I sell to freighters,” Erica pointed out, “we're on a freighter route. Who the hell do you think you're going to meet?”

 

“Fuel freighters minding their own business,” Christy said under her breath, already warming up the dual cannons overhead.

 

“Look on the bright side,” Erica said. “Whoever is on weapons in that thing...really sucks.”

 

They watched a laser blast streak past at least a mile distant from their ship.

 

“Okay.” Christy said. “I think it would be safer for us to just stay still, don't you think?”

 

“Are they even using the auto-targeting?” Erica wondered, tracking another horrifyingly incompetent blast as it trailed off into open space. Erica frowned. “Okay, this drunkard clearly isn't going to actually manage to hit us, but...aren't they still firing directly into the shipping lane?”

 

“Not good,” Christy agreed. “Watch for any miraculously accurate blasts. I'll pull up the sensors, and see whether he's actually hitting anyone.”

 

“Okay,” Erica said, pulling the weapons console into her reach. “We might have to get out of here fast. My fuel contacts are not going to be happy if we attract attention to their siphoning spots.”

 

“Understood,” Christy said. She was already flipping through the sensor maps.

 

“Bad news,” she said after a moment.

 

A blast streaked past the dash, much closer than before. “Just a close ricochet off some debris,” Erica said, waving it off.

 

“There's an Atmos patrol fleet in the shipping route,” Christy said.

 

Erica scrunched up her nose. “They don't care about syphoning,” she said. “They should just pass by.”

 

“Yes,” Christy agreed. “The bad news is that shipping patrols, like freighters, don't travel in hyperspace, and their formations, unlike freighters, are formulated to cover as great an area as possible.”

 

“They're going to take fire?” Erica said unhappily.

 

“They're definitely going to take residual fire if this guy doesn't let up,” Christy said.

 

“We could blast it?” Erica suggested, eyeing the console in front of her.

 

“Then Atmos will cruise in and assume we were the ones firing into the route,” Christy said, shaking her head. “We'll just have to take cover and wait ‘til they blast this ship themselves.”

 

The nav console started flashing urgently. “That'll be Atmos,” Christy said, grimly. “Strap in, and yell if you see any laser blasts coming our way.”

 

“Understood,” Erica said, wrapping her seat straps around her waist and chest.

 

Christy pushed the engines up to a warm hum, the whole ship vibrating with the energy to dart off at any moment. The streaks of light from laser blasts immediately increased, peppering the immediate horizon with enough criss-crossing light trails that the space between the two ships resembled nothing more than an immense glowing net. Christy pushed the manual throttle down, propelling them forwards, into the fading net.

 

“What are you doing?” Erica cried.

 

“Atmos are coming up right behind us,” Christy said, “We need to get behind some debris on this guy's side, because frankly, it's unlikely this gunner will be able to hit us from behind any better than they've managed from the front.”

 

Erica looked unhappy about this explanation. “Can I shoot him if he gets any closer?”

 

“If you must,” Christy said. She was already squinting through the readouts on the nearby chunks of rocks and debris. “That one,” she said, flicking the screens aside and grasping the controls. She wrenched them around a very slowly travelling asteroid. “Match speed,” she said to the autopilot, flicking over primary control to the ship's systems.

 

Their opponent with the poor aim had apparently interpreted their movement as a demonstration of aggression, and was firing even more frequently and erratically.

 

“That cannon is definitely on manual, right?” Erica wondered, staring out the dash at the light show. “There is no way that auto-target couldn't fix on a still ship. Or even just this asteroid.”

 

“Depressing,” Christy agreed. “Here comes Atmos to sort him out.”

 

Erica glanced out the other side of the dash. The blunt white noses of Atmos patrol vehicles were indeed coming into view.

 

“They'll have their shields on high,” Christy said, tracking their movements with her eyes. “Having been hit by laser fire, however, they'll be aware that their best course of defense is avoidance and then eradication.”

 

“So they'll do exactly what I wanted to do,” Erica groused, stroking the weapons console.

 

Christy rolled her eyes, prompting the autopilot to shift the ship out of the direct path of an almost depleted laser blast. The shields easily absorbed the rays they hadn't managed to avoid.

 

“They'll be trying to make contact now, just out of firing range.” Christy went on, pointing at the uniform line that the small wave of patrol ships had formed. “Now it depends on whether whoever is captaining that ship wants Atmos to know who they are. If they don't, they won't answer the vid.”

 

Erica looked at their own partially dismantled comms console against the dash. “I see,” she said.

 

“If they want to have any kind of a chance, they'll quit it with the cannon,” Christy said.

 

They waited for a couple of seconds, and the bursts only began to increase in frequency. “I guess that decides it,” Erica said, raising her eyebrows.

 

“Definitely wants to go down swinging,” Christy agreed. “There they go.”

 

An Atmos ship slipped forward out of formation and released a long burst of bright laser fire.

 

“Overkill,” Christy muttered.

 

Christy could tell that Erica had never seen a ship take fatal fire.

 

It was always much slower than you expected. The laser blasts crossed the space between the Atmso ship and their opponent's ship slowly, and the shots almost seemed to sink slowly into the hull. The ship seemed fine for a moment. The top mounted cannon still fired as erratically and frequently as before.

 

Then the ship seemed to bulge, and slowly bloom outwards. It was like watching a flaming butterfly stretching, bursting through the seams of its metal chrysalis.

 

Shining slivers and scraps of metal fled, flipping end over end, and then the hungry orange internal explosion drew back in on itself, having instantly consumed every flammable gas in reach.

 

Finally, the large blackened chunks of fuselage and engine components began to drift apart.

 

“Do you think they're dead?” Erica said after a moment. Her eyes were huge, and she was clutching the straps around her shoulders.

 

Christy studied her tracking screen. The Atmos ships were still hovering, probably pinging the area for other ships. Their heat was so low that it should have been passable as excess debris, especially while they were shielded by the existing scrap metal between them.

 

The patrol moved back into the freight lane without incident, clearly unwilling to waste any further time on the standoff.

 

A little point blinked red suddenly, just as the ships left. It was far too small for a craft.

 

“Oh...wow.” Christy said, grudgingly impressed. “He's in open space.”

 

“What?” Erica said, disbelieving. “He must be dead then.”

 

“Maybe not if he's in an insulated respirator suit,” Christy theorised. “But he won't last.”

 

Christy enlarged the screen sector containing the blinking point. It did look like a passable humanoid shape.

 

“Do you know how to pick things up with the electromagnet?” Christy asked, glancing at Erica.

 

“What, like filings and rivets, that sort of thing?” Erica replied, confused.

 

“It's the same theory,” Christy said, shrugging. “Except with ships, debris, and occasionally people.”

 

“Do not trust me with magnetising a person,” Erica said. “This will not go how you want it to go.”

 

She followed Christy's pointed finger to the control panel at the back of the cockpit nonetheless. “Do I press the Magnet button?”

 

“No!” Christy said, whipping her head around. “Unless you want to turn us into a pin cushion for everything in the vicinity.”

 

“I did warn you,” Erica muttered.

 

“Look at the display,” Christy said, turning back to steer them behind a nearly static chunk of engine. “Do you see the cannon?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Tap it on the screen. It should go kinda green.”

 

“Okay, I get it,” Erica said. “What else should I pick up?”

 

Christy rolled her eyes. “Try to control your debris greed,” she said, “Maybe you should tap that guy who bought my cannon. He's probably just about asphyxiated at this point. Then you can hit the Magnet button.”

 

The Magnet button engaged with a bleep. The entire ship began to vibrate. Christy winced and gritted her teeth until she saw the cannon and limp astronaut sucked into the underbelly of their ship. “Let's not use that again until we've had it fixed. Fucking incompetent Centuri Two mechanics,” she said, rubbing the shivers out of her arms. “Take your pistol and inspect your goods.”

 

“Will do,” Erica said. “I love repeat customers.”

 

Christy wasn't sure exactly what the deal was between this kid and apparently anyone who crossed his path, but she wasn't precisely best buddies with freighters or Atmos either. She set Voyager a hyperspace course that roughly followed their former freighter route. Hopefully sticking to the outskirts and remaining at high speed would keep their noses clean for the foreseeable future.

 

Christy kicked her manual controls out of the way and pulled her laser pistol out of the weapons locker. Erica was bringing their prisoner up to the cockpit, apparently under the power of well aimed kicks, judging by the clanging along the gangway.

 

“Can you just quit it?” he whined, practically falling into the cockpit.

 

“I'm sorry, did you not want to be rescued from freezing space?” Christy asked politely, levelling the barrel of her pistol at the man's head. He was older than them both, well-coiffured, pale and slight.

 

“Well, not by you,” he said, smiling uncertainly, “but in general, I am grateful, yes.”

 

“You don't look like a freighter.” Christy said, cocking her head.

 

“I'm Sean, Sean Parker,” he said, spreading his hands modestly, “you might have heard of me.”

 

“Nope.” Erica said.

 

Christy shrugged. His name did sound kind of familiar, but it was hardly a rare name. “We don't know or care who you are,” she said, “but we sure did recognise that Atmos laser cannon you were blasting us with. Lucky for all of us, you're a terrible shot.”

 

Sean deflated. “I thought manual aim was more accurate,” he admitted.

 

“It is.” Christy and Erica said in unison.

 

“If you can actually shoot,” Erica finished.

 

“That chick that sold it to me said it was top of the line, finds its targets intuitively, has a super accurate targeting system,” Sean griped, “I bet it wasn't even new. What a cheat.”

 

“It was definitely new,” Christy said, pointing upwards. “Seeing as she dismantled it from my shuttle top less than a month ago.”

 

Sean squinted at Erica. “You,” he said, “you're the trader that conned me out of a hundred thousand credits?”

 

“I didn't con you,” Erica said, waving her pistol at him. “You paid a fair market price, and if you're still alive in 20 hours you'll see me reinstall it onto our shuttle in full working condition. It's not my fault you don't know how to work your own purchases.”

 

Sean sat back on his heels, defeated. “Who the hell are you guys?”

 

“Convicts,” Erica said, looking at Christy.

 

“Runaways,” Christy said, glancing right back with a smirk.

 

“What's your story?” Erica asked him. “Firing on freighters isn't the smartest thing I've seen anyone do.”

 

“Are you some kind of Atmos privateer?” Christy asked quickly, only relaxing her pistol arm when he shook his head.

 

“I hate Atmos,” he said. “You have no idea how much I hate them. No, I'm a salvager nowadays, I guess. Hence the cannons and the shooting. I pick over what survives the blast.”

 

“I think they call that piracy.” Erica said. “And you're officially the worst pirate I've ever met. Do you actually go around blasting ships at random with only one cannon? Are you serious?”

 

“Deadly serious,” Sean smiled weakly. “I wouldn't say that I'm good at it. It's just the easiest way to make serious credits these days.”

 

Christy shrugged. “I get it. Times are hard. We'll dump you on the next moon colony.”

 

Erica frowned at her. “I think we should kill him. Maybe slowly, just in case he's lying.”

 

“That's a good instinct,” Christy said, “but we did get a free cannon. I'm willing to consider that payment for life and short passage.”

 

Erica looked unconvinced.

 

“Erica, no Atmos officer would ever volunteer to be ejected into space in the middle of a gun fight. Exploding ship or not. It's embarrassing.”

 

“I think you should just shoot me. Preferably quickly,” Sean piped up, looking at Erica nervously.

 

“Is that supposed to be endearing?” Erica asked him drily. “Because I assure you, it only makes me want to kill you more.”

 

Sean lifted his hands in apology. “It's totally your call.”

 

“How about this?” Christy said, tapping the barrel of her gun on the edge of her chair. “We chain him to that fuselage,” she pointed to the other end of the cabin, a patch of metal-mesh free of debris and any wall fixture beyond a couple of bars affixed to the wall for the purpose of lashing extra equipment. “If he's annoying, we shoot him, no questions asked. If he survives, we let him go free when we land.”

 

Erica shrugged. “I guess,” she said. She pulled a coil of densely knotted wire out of the maintenance locker. “Wrist, ankles, neck,” she directed Sean, shooing him across the cabin with a booted foot.

 

Sean settled quite happily into his corner despite his makeshift constraints. He had his arms curled around his middle and was snoring quietly before the next time they even checked the charts.

 

“He's sleeping right on top of the warmest spot,” Christy sighed, toeing off her own boots and stretching her feet. “That's the best patch of floor in the ship.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Erica said, looking up from her data pad. “We have perfectly good sleeping quarters.”

 

“Nope,” Christy said. “I've slept on every inch of this ship. If you don't have a bedwarmer – that's where you want to be.”

 

“Are you trying to say that I'm an unsatisfactory bedwarmer?” Erica said, raising her eyebrows.

 

Christy just grinned and looked back at the navigation maps, pretending to ignore Erica's mutters.

 

\---

 

They locked on to a moon colony that Erica insisted she was fairly certain housed a large number of fuel racketeers. Sean behaved himself, even offering to stay half bound on visits to the bathroom. Christy had absolutely no plans to clean up piss anytime soon, so she cut him loose.

 

He seemed to perk up considerably when the moon appeared as a speck in the main screen, picked out by the auto nav system. All the other specks that started to light up in red, however, were less welcome.

 

“What does that mean?” Sean said from the floor, his voice a slightly nervous sing-song.

 

“Is that debris?” Erica asked, squinting at the specks on her own screen.

 

“Do either of you know about any seasonal asteroid belts in this sector?” Christy said urgently, the likelyhood dawning on her slower than she would have liked.

 

“No,” Sean said, edging backwards until he met the back wall of the cockpit.

 

“I've never even been to space,” Erica said, frustrated, “why do you always ask me this stuff?”

 

Christy ignored her in favour of pulling up diagrams and maps, swearing the whole time. “Sucking unpredictable asteroid seasons. Okay. Erica, you need to be strapped in, now.”

 

Erica pulled her seat straps across her chest and waist obediently, fastening them with quick snaps.

 

“Um?” Sean said expectantly.

 

“Come here,” Christy said, reaching out with one hand still steadying the manual controls.

 

Sean slid over, offering his bound wrists. Christy shook her head and tugged hard at the wire that tethered him to the wall bars instead, leaving him just about strapped flush to the wall.

 

“Can't risk it,” she said, shrugging and settling back into her seat. She snapped her own belts into place.

 

The first of the hurtling rocks began to come into focus, blinking brightly. Christy pushed the controls right, easily dodging it. There were countless others following it, and at least twenty began to blink onscreen, indicating immediate danger.

 

Christy gritted her teeth, and flipped every thruster in the ship to port side power only. The hull whined at the immediately of the turn, unprepared for the stress that flipping the ship around almost 130 degrees.

 

“Wait, what are you doing?” Sean shouted as their target destination veered out of sight, disappearing entirely from the screens.

 

“It's called a detour,” Christy said, dragging the manual controls into her grip. She wrenched them off course and out of the path of the chunks of rock barrelling towards them.

 

“I should have stayed at home,” Sean moaned.

 

Christy sighed. “Shouldn't we all,” she said under her breath.

 

Erica looked at Christy. “Do you want me to try disintegrating them?” Her hands fluttered over the controls, shaking.

 

Christy shook her head, “They're too close. It'll pepper our hull with microscopic fragments.”

 

Erica nodded, tremulous, pushing the weapons panel away. “We'll run then?”

 

“As usual,” Christy said, almost smiling. “Hold on.”

 

She levelled out the thrusters and pursued anescape course perpendicular to the direction the asteroids were coming from. She had no idea how wide the belt might be, or how large the cluster. It could go for days, and span half of the system they were attempting to traverse for all she knew. Unpredictable asteroid seasons were the bane of any space traveller's life. The modern equivalent of bad weather; natural but absolutely deadly.

 

Christy pushed at the thrusters desperately, despite them already being set to maximum. So far they'd dodged and evaded the large chunks, the shields pinging smaller fragments off into their wake.

 

“We're almost out,” Erica noted as well. She was leaning forward, straining her straps as she stared intently at the main screen.

 

Christy nodded, eyes glued to her own personal nav screen, calculating distances and probabilities as fast as she could remember how. They were almost definitely out of immediate danger by her estimation as well. She was just about to announce success when she heard the telltale pop of their artificial atmosphere rupturing.

 

“Suck,” she said under her breath, as much a curse as it was their literal problem. “It's the suck,” she told Erica, slapping the autopilot on, and scrambling out of her straps. She tore the weapons locker open, scrabbling for the filler.

 

“Find the fracture,” she told them, eyes going immediately to the window. The cockpit was already colder than it should be.

 

Erica stumbled to her feet too, eyes darting around. She pointed. The frame around the airlock, of course. The weak metal had opened up, seam splitting wider millimetre by millimetre as they watched.

 

“Fill it,” Christy said, smacking the filler into her palm. “I need to boost life support, or we're going to suffocate in about three minutes.”

 

Erica skidded across the cockpit in her rush, almost tripping over Sean's legs in the process. “There's not going to be enough,” she said. Christy could hear the hiss of the nearly empty canister from across the room.

 

“Stop it up,” she said, shutting down access to most of the ship and redirecting the air supply to them. She heard the rip of fabric, and glanced back to see Erica stuffing the cuff of her suit into the seam.

 

“I don't think-” Erica said hopelessly, pushing at the fabric forcefully.

 

The cockpit warmed slightly, the temperature on the life support screen not static, but slower in its drop.

 

“Just hold it there,” Christy said. “It's helping.”

 

“Okay,” Erica said, pressing her hand against the rag. She shook the filler furiously, holding the button down and smearing the last dribbles around the edges of the rag.

 

“I can fix that,” Sean said, unexpectedly.

 

“Are you serious?” Erica snapped, bashing the empty filler can on the floor with one hand in futile hope that another drop would ooze out.

 

“Yeah, I used to do patchwork freelance.” Sean said. “Also, I'm not a huge fan of dying in a vacuum.”

 

“Get that man off his leash,” Christy said, magnanimously, bent over the life support panel.

 

“Thank you,” Sean said meekly. He let Erica roughly disentangle him from his wire harness.

 

“Okay,” he said. “This is going to sound like I'm asking for a little too much, but I'm going to need a blaster and a knife.”

 

Christy twisted her head around and shot him a withering glare.

 

Sean raised his hands helplessly. “I swear it's not for maiming. I can just use one at a time if you want.”

 

Christy rolled her eyes, but pulled a spare blaster out of the weapons locker next to her, tossing it to Erica.

 

Erica reluctantly offered Sean her ankle knife.

 

“Thanks,” he said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. He took the filler can from Erica too, and began to carefully slit it open.

 

“There's none left,” Erica protested, as he severed the cap and bottom of the cylinder.

 

“I know,” Sean said absently. “I've got this, be patient.”

 

He used the knife as a lever, slowly opening up the can, and spreading the slit in the metal wider and wider.

 

Erica leaned harder on her makeshift stopper. “It's going,” she warned them.

 

“It's fine,” Sean said, sing-song, tapping away at his can origami.

 

The metal opened up into a nearly flat sheet, remnants of the filler slicking the square surface. He offered Erica back her knife in exchange for the blaster, and stood up, balancing the metal on his palm, sticky side up.

 

“Okay, let go of the rag, and I'll replace it with this.” Sean said, shifting his stance in preparation.

 

Erica nodded, and sucked in a huge breath.

 

“So little trust,” Sean sighed.

 

Erica let the rag go, and they watched it suck straight into the vacuum of the internal fuselage. Sean slapped his plate of can metal over the hole, bashing it down around the edges. Then he backed up across the cockpit, squinting at the settings on the blaster.

 

“This is really old,” he said, fiddling with the switch until it clicked down. Then he took aim at the patch, and fired before anyone had the chance to think better of letting him. The low heat blast hit the opposite wall with a high pitched ding, half of the center of the blast hitting the target area. The can metal immediately conformed to the shape of the fuselage, melding into one

 

Sean applauded himself briefly, and handed back the blaster. “Cool, huh?”

 

Christy looked a little pale, but closed the life support panel. “Good work,” she said. “Never do that again. Didn't your mother teach you not to fire blasters indoors?”

 

“She felt that if indoors was where my aim was the best, it was the only place I should be firing blasters,” Sean admitted. “I was a terrible shot as a child.”

 

“Just as a child?” Christy said under her breath.

 

“I'm super glad that we aren't going to die right now,” Erica said, “But we're low on fuel again.” She slumped into her seat. “And I don't have any contacts nearby.”

 

Sean raised his hand. “Um, I do?” he said, hopefully.

 

“I can't believe this guy is more useful that I am right now,” Erica grumbled.

 

“I found a cache near here a couple of weeks ago,” Sean admitted, “there isn't much left, but it should be enough to get us to another planet.”

 

Christy let him press the rough co-ordinates into the nav screen, and set them into motion.

 

Sean was right about the cache, but there was less than an eight of a tank remaining. They drained it completely and let the ship drift out of sight of the cache under its remaining momentum while they figured out their next stop.

 

“I have no idea where we are,” Erica sighed, poking at her nav screen. “I need to ping some people to figure out who might be selling fuel way out here.”

 

“I want my one vidcall,” Sean grumbled. “You guys should have let me die in space if you were just planning on letting me die in here anyway.”

 

Erica rolled her eyes.

 

“Okay,” Christy said.

 

Sean kicked at the door frame and Christy glared at him until he patted the door in apology.

 

“I said okay,” Christy said pointedly. “We'll do a radio run.”

 

“A what?” Erica said, admitting her ignorance first. “I've never been on a space ship,” she said to Sean defensively.

 

Christy selected a planet on her nav screen for the autopilot. It didn't look particularly appealing. The nav asking her whether she was sure was the clincher.

 

“I don't like that planet.” Sean said.

 

“You've never been, how would you know?” Christy snapped. She set the ship into motion, turning off the hyperdrive to conserve fuel. “Now get some sleep, because landing is going to suck.”

 

Sean huffed and stomped out of the cockpit to his berth.

 

“Such a baby,” Christy said, shaking her head.

 

Erica came over to rest her face on her shoulder.

 

“We'll be fine,” Christy told her. “We'll stop off, ping some of your contacts and be headed towards them before this dusty little planet has the time to turn us out of the light of its sun.”

 

“Sounds good.” Erica said, going all limp down Christy's side. “Can we sleep now?”

 

“Yes,” Christy agreed, steering them both out of the cockpit.

 

 

\---

 

 

“We're going to die,” Sean said. “We're definitely going to die, my girl is going to be so pissed.”

 

“Could you muzzle him or something?” Erica snapped.

 

Christy ignored them both, flipping thruster power back and forth to stabilise the landing gear. They bounced slightly on impact, the rocky terrain beneath them crumbling when it took the full weight of the ship. They settled momentarily and then dropped a good three metres, shaking the hell out of the ship.

 

Erica swore, Sean yelped, and the internal lighting flickered off momentarily before returning.

 

“Satisfied?” Christy said, pushing her controls aside.

 

“With not being dead?” Sean said. “Yes, very satisfied, thank you.”

 

She slapped him gently on the head as she passed, unhooking the front of a storage case to reveal a set of breathing aids.

 

“Purifiers,” she said, passing them to Sean and Erica. “The atmosphere should be adequate for human lungs, but we did land in a mountainous region.”

 

“Is it really necessary that I come along?” Sean asked, hand raised. “I'm really much better at watching things. Sleeping. That sort of thing.”

 

“If you can shoot a blaster, you're in the landing party,” Christy said. “Get your boots on.”

 

Thanks to the thin air of space training and penal colony oxygen restrictions, Christy was capable of walking a fair distance without using the breathing aid around her neck. Erica, however, used to a lifetime of oxygen rich atmospheres, needed the apparatus full time to tackle even a short incline. Sean knotted the strap tight for her, turning it into as serviceable a semi-permanent breathing mask as they could manage. She jumped in place gingerly, before giving them a thumbs up.

 

“What exactly is it that we're looking for again?” Sean asked Christy, in between sucks at his purifier.

 

Christy pointed Erica on towards a cliff face in the near-distance. “An extremely old radio tower.”

 

“A radio tower,” Sean repeated in disbelief. “You do realise we have a perfectly good, albeit slightly gutted, vidradio in the ship, right?”

 

“Seeing as I'm the one who gutted it, yes,” Christy said, kicking a loose stone out of their path. “The beauty of the old radio towers is that unlike our Atmos-locked vidradio set, they are very difficult to trace.”

 

“They could just triangulate you,” Sean argued.

 

“Eventually, but it would take time.” Christy agreed. “So if we send our messages once, wait for the repeaters to boost it, and then simply leave the planet, the danger of having our communications traced back is nearly nil.”

 

“Alright,” Sean said, trudging along obediently.

 

“It shouldn't be far,” Christy said. “Usually they're at the highest point of a planet, right beside some nice reflective valleys.”

 

Some dusty debris rolled over their feet. They looked up. Erica was standing on the ridge above them, waving an arm and pointing to catch their attention. A vast rusty red tower projected high into the air above them, the distant tip gleaming bright silver.

 

“Wow,” Sean said. “Do you think you could sell these for scrap?”

 

“Atmos installed thousands of them throughout the near galaxy a few centuries ago,” Christy said, scrabbling up the sheer rockface. “They're not exactly rare metal, but if you have a ship big enough to pull something this big apart, I don't see why not.”

 

They cleared the ridge, joining Erica on the edge of a deep valley.

 

“I think I may have been overambitious.” Sean said, staring down at the base far below them.

 

Christy pointed at a tiny dollhouse of a cabin in the valley below. “That's our target,” she said, nudging Sean forward with her shoulder.

 

“Whoa,” he said, overbalancing and landing on his behind in a puff of dust. The pebbles and loose dust pulled him over the edge of the ridge, sliding him a step lower into the valley.

 

Erica whooped, and threw herself down into the same spot, sliding down with barely enough time for Sean to assess his next step and set the dust under him back into motion.

 

 

Strangely the cabin wasn't much bigger than it had looked from above the valley. Erica had to duck under the doorframe, rubbing at her sore behind.

 

“This is one seriously old vidradio,” she said out the side of her purifier, shaking her head in amazement at the equipment in front of them.

 

Sean leaned down and blew, laughing when the thick layer of baked on dust didn't even quaver.

 

“Idiot,” Christy said, fishing a rag out of her suit pocket and rubbing it over the central console.

 

“Would it be okay if I sent my girl a message?” Sean asked, awkwardly.

 

Erica looked at Christy doubtfully over her purifier mask.

 

“Keep it generic,” Christy instructed him. “No locations, no dates, no descriptions. Just tell her you're alive, and you intend to return one day, in a completely undisclosed period of time.”

 

“Ouch,” Sean said. “Rough, but fair.”

 

“We need the co-ordinates,” she said. “Write them down.” She pointed him at the window.

 

“What?” Sean said, looking at the window and then at Christy.

 

“The dust, idiot,” she said, drawing a circle on the surface in example.

 

Sean huffed and started tracing out digits.

 

“Did you want to radio-?” Christy looked at Erica.

 

She'd removed her purifier and was leaning on the radio console, taking slow deep breaths.

 

She shook her head. “I don't have anyone,” she said.

 

“You should bounce a couple of my fuel contacts to see whether they're still in business though,” she added after a couple of breaths.

 

“Got it,” Christy said. “I just have one contact. She should be safe enough to keep in contact with, as long as we space out the calls. Write the numbers under Sean's while I set up.”

 

Erica pulled the operator's chair out and got under the console, searching out the power connections, and flicking them on as she sorted them, skipping over all the non-vital features.

 

“Uh, should the tower be vibrating?” Sean asked after a couple of minutes.

 

“Yes, and no,” Christy muttered through a thick layer of dust. “Just assume it's a yes today.”

 

“I'm just going to make sure it isn't actually falling down,” Sean said, staring skyward as he left the communication cabin.

 

Christy backed out of the tight alcove and flopped into the chair, flipping the screen on, and approving the radio output transmission for video. She pinged the fuel contacts on the text only band first, receiving return pings on all but one.

 

“Your third contact is gone,” she informed Erica.

 

Erica shrugged and scrubbed them all off the window with one hand. “Not unusual for this end of the galaxy. Someone else will pop up soon enough.”

 

Christy nodded and dialed Alice's contact number, hitting the transmit button.

 

“Alice,” she said to the screen. “Just checking in.”

 

She waited a couple of minutes, and the screen cleared, the gaunt features of her friend's face slowly piecing together through the static.

 

“Chris!” she said, smiling in ecstatic surprise. “Are you well?”

 

Christy smiled back. “I'm always well,” she said. “Your skin looks good.” It didn't. “Anything important happening? How is Amy?”

 

The lag was long enough that Christy could see the extent to which Alice's epidermis had been destroyed. She was wearing a high necked suit and had spread medigel down the side of her face she kept turned away from the vid screen. She was also shaking almost imperceptibly. She sat up after a moment, clearly receiving Christy's lagged message.

 

Alice leaned in after watching, smiling wryly. “It's business as usual,” she said, signing the complete opposite. “Amy's caught some kind of virus, but it should clear up soon. I'm keeping a close eye on her.”

 

“Take care,” Christy told her, saluting smartly. “I'll be in contact.”

 

“You always are,” Alice said, returning the salute.

 

Christy ended the transmission, and looked to Erica. “I'm at the top of the Atmos most wanted list,” she told her frankly.

 

Erica raised her eyebrows in surprise. “And she seemed so nice.”

 

“She was the best navigator in the fleet,” Christy said, “I was in Uranian orbit when it happened,” she touched her face, and nodded at the blank vid screen. “She still hasn't told me how it happened.”

 

“She's dying,” Erica said.

 

Christy shrugged. “Eventually. There's something else. It shouldn't be killing her this fast.”

 

“I heard there's some new space sickness going around,” Erica said, tapping her purifier tank thoughtfully. “You hear a lot of gossip in spaceports.”

 

“It's not gossip if it's true.” Christy said, getting out of the chair. “Where's Sean?”

 

He was staring up the length of the antenna tower, clinging to the nearest quivering support.

 

“That's not good for your brain,” Christy told him, grasping his shoulder to wake him out of his reverie. “Hurry up, we can't leave the tower broadcasting too long.”

 

Sean laughed and patted the support. “I was just thinking about how I'd describe this place to my girl,” he said. “You know, if it were safe.”

 

“Honestly, it's best not to even think it,” Christy said, not really joking. “We have no idea what kind of tech Atmos have now.”

 

Sean smiled, slipping back into the comms cabin ahead of her and settling into the chair in front of the radiovid screen.

 

He started dialling, glancing up occasionally at the window.

 

Christy stared at the number Sean was punching in, and then up at the number he'd carved into the dust on the glass above them.

 

“Wait-” she said.

 

The vid connected, revealing a confused looking Alice peering through the static.

 

“Why are you reconnecting?” she said, voice distorting as her face dropped in and out of the static, “they'll trace you-”

 

“Amy gave me these digits,” Sean said, confused, scrambling out of the chair and out of Christy's immediate reach.

 

“Sean?”

 

A second face emerged in the static beside Alice, just long enough for Christy to recognise her before she turned away to cough off screen, wet and scratchy, like Alice had in the vid she'd sent Christy in prison.

 

Christy looked at Sean. “You and Amy?” she said, barely able to put the words together in her disbelief.

 

“Christy, you have to cut the connection and leave immediately,” Alice said, eyes flicking from Sean to Christy. “They can't ignore a repeat connection. They'll already have triangulated you. Go!”

 

Christy smacked the End button, and swung herself under the console. She wrenched the connections under the console apart. “Get back to the ship,” she said, twisting the heads of the connectors until they snapped loose. “If we play cat and mouse we might be able to distract them from the radio tower.”

 

“Just getting away would be good enough, don't you think?” Sean said, fruitlessly trying to help Erica with her Purifier as she slapped him away.

 

“If you don't mind them tracing the recipients of all our outgoing calls, including your girlfriend, our fuel contacts, and an Atmos insider who will be shot for treason.” Christy said shortly. “Just run, you airsucking excuse for a life form.”

 

They ran, kicking up a telltale trail of rocks and dust clouds behind them.

 

“Run through the crevices,” Christy called out over the sound of their pounding feet.

 

They made it over two ridges by zigzagging through the mazelike cracks in the dirt before the thunderous growl of ships clearing the upper atmosphere began to echo through the valleys.

 

Sean began to swear in between sucks at his Purifier, dropping behind. Erica was well ahead, her loose hair flipping around the straps of her mask as she sprinted. Christy grabbed Sean's wrist in a punishing grip, forcing him to match her pace as the ship came into view. Erica made a beeline for the hatch release, no more than one hundred metres out of reach.

 

The hum of engines from above intensified, and continued to rise in volume. They'd definitely sighted the ship. A flutter of silvery material caught Christy's eye, and she swore, startling Sean enough that he glanced at her in mid-stride. “They're dropping a silver land party,” she said. “Active Atmos soldiers wear silver.”

 

“You wear silver,” Sean wheezed, his head down as they pelted across the open dirt.

 

“I wear grey,” Christy said. “Dishonourably discharged wear grey.”

 

There was a whistle and a crack, and Erica dropped out of sight.

 

“She's gone,” Sean cried, wrenching out of Christy's grip.

 

“No, she's just down. It's only dust.” Christy said, voice tight. “They have a terrain gun. You need to get to the ship. Boot the engines, leave the hatch open for me.”

 

Christy drew her blaster pistol and they both threw themselves into a sprint, heading for the dissipating cloud of dust that shrouded Erica's form from view.

 

More catapulted stones narrowly missed them, shattering on impact with the stony ground. Christy returned fire in the direction they appeared to originate, taking cover in the dust clouds the rocks kicked up. Sean dove past Erica to hit the hatch deploy and disappeared into the ship without a look back.

 

“I've got you,” Christy said, reaching Erica. She was conscious, but clearly in shock, nursing what looked like a snapped tibia.

 

“I'm fine,” Erica said, looking up at her, eyes wide and glassy. “I'm fine.”

 

“Think again, Convict Lee,” someone else said behind her.

 

Christy turned slowly, her blaster hand turning faster than the rest of her body. She fired automatically, certain that she'd met her mark before she even saw their silver-suited corpse crumple into the dirt.

 

She turned back to Erica, to find that two other Atmos soldiers had dragged her to her feet and were snapping her into plastic cuffs, blasters trained on Christy's chest and head.

 

Erica was still staring at her, wide-eyed, but she nodded once. She let the Atmos soldiers take her weight, and closed her eyes.

 

Christy set her jaw and swallowed hard. “It's Junior Lieutenant Lee, actually,” she said, leaping backwards into the hatch of the ship.

 

She hit the door retract button and slowly made her way up the gangway in the dark, sliding from wall to wall as Sean jerkily pushed them into hyperspace.

 


	3. Part 3

They sat in hyperspace for a couple of hours. Their silence was only interrupted by the ship's auto-nav alerting them to amendments and recalculations in their course.

 

After a couple of alerts, Christy lifted her face out of her palms and holstered her pistol. “Where are we headed?”

 

Sean looked up from his seat on the floor. He glanced jerkily at the empty seat Erica usually occupied. “I don't know – I just punched in the next preset – I think it's one of the fuel stops you pinged.”

 

“Okay.” Christy said.

 

“Maybe we can ask around the spaceport for information...ask what happens to Atmos prisoners?”

 

“I know what happens to Atmos prisoners,” Christy said.

 

Sean shrugged. “No one will be going to Uranus these days. It's completely blockaded. Fuel wars, remember?”

 

Christy laughed hollowly, “Yeah, I remember. So they'll follow standard treason procedure – execution.”

 

“I heard once from an ex-officer...” Sean started awkwardly.

 

“If you mean Amy, just say Amy.”

 

Sean ducked his head. “Amy said there was some controversy about prisoners getting drafted into testing. Rumours of biochemical weaponry and stuff like that. It sounded shady.”

 

Christy looked out the dash for a while, tracking stars as they spun past at hyperspeed.

 

“Sean,” she said, finally.

 

“What?”

 

“I think Amy might be sick.”

 

Sean frowned at her. “She's just pregnant, Christy. Which, by the way, I would not have done had I known she was your friend.”

 

Christy looked at him like she was going to punch him for a second, before she shook her head at him. “I mean, space sick. Like Alice.”

 

“But Alice is burnt,” Sean said, confused.

 

“That's what I thought,” Christy said. “But the worse she gets, the more the decay is starting to look...unnatural. It's more than just radiation. Infection. And it might be my fault after all.”

 

“How could you infect her with space sickness?” Sean asked, rolling his eyes.

 

“She used to send me vids in prison,” Christy said. “I only ever got one, but it would have been enough to make her a known associate.”

 

“Hold up. Are you implying that Atmos is infecting anyone who rebels against them?” Sean said slowly.

 

“Anti-Atmos fuel freighters, fuel smugglers, ex-Atmos officers, Atmos traitors, those aiding any of the above, anyone who knows or sees anything they shouldn't.” Christy counted them off on her fingers.

 

“It would explain that suicidal Saturnian blockade, Alice, possibly Amy, the rumours in the spaceports, and exactly where they're sending the convicts – because they sure as hell weren't going to Uranus while I was there.”

 

“Saturn? That place is completely roped off, thanks to the poisonous gases the mines stirred up there.”

 

Christy gestured explosively at him. “Poisonous gases are what mines thrive on, Sean. It's either an Atmos scare tactic, or those gases are the exact opposite of natural.”

 

“This is still a pretty big leap in logic,” Sean said, carefully.

 

“We need to ask more questions,” Christy agreed. “You'll have to scope out the spaceport when we land. My trail is too hot right now.”

 

Sean nodded.

 

Christy's stomach dropped. “I mean. If you want to do that for me. I won't hold it against you if you want to skip town when we land.”

 

Sean looked pained.

 

“You're not my crew, so you're free to go.” Christy said. She tried to keep her face impassive. It had only been a momentary lapse in memory.

 

“I can't exactly leave now,” Sean said miserably. “Not now that I know that Amy and Alice are your friends. Amy would kill me if I came home now without you, and I know you won't come without Erica.”

 

Christy shrugged. “You could lay low for a while. They never have to know the whole story.”

 

Sean suddenly looked furious. “Would you do that to Erica?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Sean opened his mouth and closed it again.

 

“Does Amy know you're a pirate, and a shitty one, at that?” Christy asked him, deadpan.

 

“No, but – that was necessary. I never actually lied.” Sean looked out the cockpit dash momentarily. “I want to help you get her back,” he said decisively.

 

“This is just a ploy to get on Amy's good side, huh,” Christy guessed, flashing him a cynical grimace.

 

Sean ignored the question, getting up and sitting in the third crew seat, the one usually reserved for the comms officer. He poked around the operating system until he seemed to have familiarised himself with it, then opened a blank data screen. “Tell me what kind of questions I should be asking,” he said, fingers primed above the holo-keyboard.

 

Christy rubbed her hands over her face again, and looked at him for a moment.

 

“Bio-testing,” she said finally. “Wherever Atmos is doing the most bio-work, they'll be offering financial incentive to volunteer.”

 

“I'll have to pretend I'm interested in the payout,” Sean agreed. “See who they can connect me with.”

 

“You're going to have to shoot your way out,” Christy said.

 

Sean shrugged. “I'm sure that part will be indoors.”

 

 

\---

 

 

“He gave you these co-ordinates?” Christy said, in disbelief, staring at the scrap of ragged paper that Sean had handed her when he'd reboarded the ship. He'd been gone less than half a day. Christy had barely had time to find a fuel agent who would take her chip without a recommendation from a fellow wrangler. Erica usually guaranteed their transactions on the spot.

 

Sean shrugged, lifting his hands. He was still clutching his blaster in one, coated in blood from barrel to wrist.

 

“I see,” Christy said, suddenly grateful. “You're probably a better land pirate than a space pirate, you know that?”

 

Sean swelled a little in pride, taking his seat in the comms chair with a swagger. “He was a trafficker,” he said humbly, “it was the least I could do.”

 

Christy punched in the co-ordinates, smiling just a little.

 

“The next one is on me,” she said, patting her own blaster so Sean understood.

 

He nodded. “Let me tell you what the tavern told me about this place first,” he said, leaning forward in his seat.

 

Christy had all this information firmly impressed into her memory by the time they were in orbit around the dark artificially-atmosphered moon the co-ordinates had locked them onto.

 

“Almost no security,” Sean noted, pleased.

 

“It would be too conspicuous,” Christy said, guiding them towards the single storey white structure that all of Sean's informants had mentioned. She landed on the roof gently, thankful that the ship would probably be almost camouflaged by the immense grey air conditioning units that flanked them.

 

“Wait for us on the gangway,” she told Sean, not expecting him to respond with an immediate salute.

 

“Safety off,” he said perkily, leaning against the hatch as she set off across the rooftop, blaster raised.

 

It was apparent from the chill and the stark white walls that started immediately inside the accessway that this place was either a scientific or medical facility. Christy's spine prickled, and she took a moment to shake off that creeping fear before she kicked in the palm access panel of the nearest door. She smashed the joint of the two sliding panels inwards with the heel of her boot, and kicked them aside, striding into the laboratory with her eyes narrowed in determination.

 

“You don't have laboratory access,” the sole inhabitant said, slowly standing up from his stool.

 

“I just came to pick up some parcels,” Christy said, lifting her pistol to head height. “It looks like you're parcel number one.”

 

The boy met her eye for a moment, coldly calm. Then he dove to the floor to her immediate left, gloved hands outstretched.

 

“Oh no, you don't,” Christy said, automatically leaping after him. Her boots came down on his back, crushing a few ribs with satisfying crunches. He lifted a shaking hand, an open topped petri dish visible in his palm.

 

“This plan,” Christy said in wonder, “I think you planned it with the assumption that you'd be fighting another scientist, right?”

 

She lifted one foot and used it to press the kid's hand back down into the clean white flooring. The glass splintered, and she crushed his palm into it, grinding her boot a little. He let out a breathless squeal, almost more anger than pain.

 

“I know,” Christy agreed, stepping off his back. She used the toe of her boot to flip him over onto his back. An access identification tag flapped on his chest.

 

“Zuckerberg,” Christy read aloud. “What do you do here, Dr. Zuckerberg?”

 

He said nothing, his cold blue eyes sliding shut.

 

“You're not unconscious yet, Dr. Zuckerberg!” Christy scolded him. “Trust me, I'll know when you are, and I'll let you know that it's time to close your eyes.”

 

The boy snorted, his chest spasming a little at the movement.

 

“That's right,” Christy said. “It's funny. Just like tipping all this lovely research onto the floor is going to be funny.”

 

Zuckerberg's face twitched this time, almost a smile.

 

“I know,” Christy sighed. “Who cares about this research? After all, you've already logged all the data. It would be no great loss to you.”

 

Christy leaned down a little, and pressed her boot down gently over Zuckerberg's throat.

 

“Unless,” she said, wonderingly, “Unless, I tip it all onto the floor, and, I don't know, crush you into it... Wouldn't that be funny?”

 

Zuckerberg paled a little.

 

“I can't imagine what you might be growing in these little vials,” Christy said. “For all I know, you might be a geneticist, or a virologist, or something equally highly esteemed and lacking in personal responsibility.”

 

Christy peered into his face. “You are, aren't you?” she said. “I hear virologists these days spent half their time just waiting around for volunteers or condemned criminals. Is that true?”

 

She pressed down a little harder. Zuckerberg remained still and silent, his chest sticking a little as his breathing quickened.

 

“I imagine you'd just need one little test subject to show off a new breakthroughs to the bosses, right? What a lucky boy.”

 

Zuckerberg slowly nodded around the tip of Christy's boot.

 

“There you go,” Christy said, soothingly. “Now where are you keeping her?”

 

He lifted his crushed hand slightly in the direction of a wall-recessed door, his entire arm shaking with the effort, the twisted fingers twitching wildly.

 

“Very good,” Christy said. “One last question now. Have you started the testing yet?”

 

“No,” Zuckerberg choked out. “Not yet.”

 

“That's great,” Christy said, smiling down at him. “Thank you for all your help, Doctor.”

 

She straightened up, grasped the edge of the nearby bench for balance, and swept the contents onto the floor. Beakers shattered, test tubes smashed, and petri dishes cracked. She kicked Zuckerberg into the mess, and pinned him with a pointed toe.

 

She moved on to the next bench, and the two adjacent, nudging Zuckerberg along through the sharp mess as she went. By the time the majority of the lab had reached the floor, puddles fizzling as they reacted with each other, mould splatters developing interesting color splotches, Zuckerberg was finally whimpering.

 

Christy rolled him one more time, admiring the chemical burn he'd managed to pick up across his cheek. “Have you learnt your lesson?” she asked kindly, pulling a latex glove over her hand before she grasped him by the scruff of his neck.

 

Zuckerberg gasped and shook like a fish out of water, eyes tightly and wisely shut against the mess.

 

“It's fun being a test subject, isn't it?” Christy said, dropping him on his face, and picking him up again. Glass tinkled across the floor, almost covering the gentle whirr of another opening door.

 

Christy looked up, fingers tightening in her captive's hair. She had her blaster pistol in hand before the interruption came into view.

 

They clearly caught sight of the mess before entering, and their soft footfalls stopped short.

 

“Who is it?” Christy called in greeting, shaking Zuckerberg like a dog with a rat.

 

“Please!” a tall figure stepped out of the next room, hands raised. Hand raised. One was flesh. The other was a metal outline of a hand, a shining silver skeleton that his sleeve hung around. When he lowered his arms beseechingly, his face was similarly half metal. He was already crying from both eyes though, both deep brown, one lidded with thick eyelashes. He was going to be a beautiful android.

 

“What the suck are you?” Christy stood upright and stepped back, dragging Zuckerberg through the glassy mess underfoot. “I'll snap his neck, I'll tear him open and rub his wounds into this shit he's been cultivating.”

 

The android dropped to his knees and began to shuffle through the glass, hands reaching in front of him. “Please, don't hurt him any more,” he begged. “Let me take him, I'll carry him.”

 

Christy snorted and shook the Zuckerberg again. He gurgled and twitched.

 

“He'll probably die anyway,” she shrugged, “I could let him die slowly in this biohazard of a room, or we could take him to my ship and toss him into the medical tank. What do you think?”

 

“My name is Eduardo,” the android said. “I am his lab assistant. Anything you need, I can help you with. Please, don't kill Mark. He is my master. My creator master.”

 

“Well, it looks like I'm your master now,” Christy said. She dropped Zuckerberg's twitching body into Eduardo's outreached hands. “If you want him to live, you carry him. Take me to my crew member, and don't make me crush your master's skull, got it?”

 

Eduardo nodded eagerly, cradling his human master gently. He stroked Zuckerberg's face gently with his metal hand. “Your crew member is in the next laboratory,” he said. “She is unharmed beyond structural damage she sustained prior to our procurement. Please do not hurt Mark further.”

 

“Follow,” Christy commanded. Eduardo obeyed, lifting Zuckerberg's uncrushed hand to palm print them into the lab.

 

Erica was sitting on a padded bench opposite the door, one hand cuffed to the wall. She raised her fists defensively as the door slid open but dropped them when she saw Christy in the doorway.

 

“What did you do to him?” she said, looking curiously at Zuckerberg's limp body. “I like it.”

 

Christy shrugged. “He wasn't answering my questions quickly enough.”

 

“I didn't think you were coming,” Erica said after a moment, wincing as Eduardo unclamped her cuff with a digital control from Zuckerberg's pocket.

 

“You don't know a lot about me,” Christy said, grimly supervising Eduardo's movements. “Are you injured?” She raised her boot, and Eduardo fumbled the control, nearly dropping it.

 

“They only took a tissue sample,” Erica said, raising her hand to display a raw patch on her wrist about the size of her thumbnail. “The android is a domestic and work assistant, I think. He prepares food, fetches and carries, supplicates.”

 

“Supplicates?” Christy asked, eyebrow raised.

 

Erica shrugged. “I don't judge people's preferred android modes.”

 

“Do you think he'll be safe to take along? He claims to know everything about the bioweaponry.” Christy said, eyeing Eduardo. He was stroking Zuckerberg again, metal face plate pressed against his forehead. He was whispering lowly to him.

 

“Hey,” Christy warned him sharply. “Don't make me shut you both up.”

 

Eduardo snapped his mouth shut obediently.

 

“He's defaulted to your command,” Erica observed, “He should obey you at least until his master recovers. And if he doesn't, we have a ship full of laser pistols.”

 

Christy nodded in agreement. “Do you need me to carry you?”

 

Erica looked dubious. “My leg is only half healed from the snap, but you shouldn't risk it.”

 

“You think I can't shoot with my hands full?” Christy said. She helped lift Erica onto her hip, wrapping her good leg around her back. “Right, keep that one tense, and hold on to my shoulders, got it?”

 

“Yep,” Erica said, hitching herself up. “You need a bath.”

 

“You can take care of that later.” Christy grinned, flicking her hand at the android beside them.

 

Eduardo lifted Zuckerberg again and took the lead, clearly well aware of where he should be in a hostage situation. Alarms were beginning to go off in the distance. Christy supposed the laboratory doors had specific opening time limits that Eduardo had breeched. She couldn't blame him for that. She'd have jammed their control panels open with her laser pistol if he hadn't cooperated.

 

Their corridors were still devoid of life so far, but Christy didn't want to risk it. She hustled them back the way she'd come, Eduardo easily loping ahead of her with his master in hand, despite the obvious weight imbalance his semi finished state inflicted upon him.

 

She had to push him aside to kick the roof access open when they got back to it, as Eduardo couldn't do anything about the panel she'd fried.

 

Sean was predictably twirling his new pistol around his forefingers as they rounded the tower of air conditioning units and approached the gangway.

 

“One day you're going to lose those airsucking thumbs,” Erica told him, slipping out of Christy's hold to limp aboard under her own steam.

 

He laughed, then turned fourty-five degrees and pressed the muzzle of the gun to Eduardo's fleshsided head. Eduardo stopped dead, arms tightening around his master's form.

 

“What is this, Christy?” Sean asked conversationally.

 

“Android,” she said, nodding at them in turn, “creepy virologist.”

 

“Okay,” Sean said, holstering his pistol. “But I'll shoot them both if I even begin to smell a plot.”

 

“Just what I want to hear,” Christy said. “Go help Erica into the tank.” She hit the door retract.

 

Eduardo stiffened up. “Please,” he said, turning to Christy. “Please, mistress.”

 

Christy fought off a shudder. “Don't call me that.”

 

“Please,” Eduardo whispered. “Please, mistress.”

 

Sean stared at him, lip curled. His hand hovered over his holster again.

 

Zuckerberg 's foot twitched a couple of times. Death throes.

 

“Look, Eduardo, he'll probably die anyway,” she sighed. “There's no point when we already have injured crew members.”

 

Eduardo stepped forward stiffly, lifting Zuckerberg's body higher in his arms. “You promised,” he said, “you promised.”

 

“What the suck is he doing?” Sean said, raising his voice over Eduardo's looped begging, fumbling for his pistol. “Should I shoot him?”

 

“You watch him die,” Eduardo whispered as he drew closer, just about crushing Christy against the fuselage with Zuckerberg's twitching body. His eyes were leaking copious amounts of tears again, the tracks staining his flesh side and turning the skin around his eye red-rimmed. His half lip was quivering miserably. “You promised me.”

 

The metal fuselage was freezing cold against Christy's bare neck. Her entire body prickled. The cold dragged her back to Uranus. The ice planet that froze the blood of every prisoner that orbited it. Where everyone you loved was as good as dead. Eighty four years.

 

“You promised me. You promised me-”.

 

“Okay!” she heard herself shout. “Sean, put him in the tank.”

 

Eduardo stopped whispering. He turned to follow Sean into the guts of the ship.

 

“You could at least say thank you,” Christy called after them, pulling at her skin-tight suit collar.

 

“You haven't saved him yet.” Eduardo replied, marching away in time with Sean's strides.

 

\---

 

 

Zuckerberg monopolised the tank for a week. Christy wasn't sure whether it was even safe to leave someone in a meditank for more than two days. Eduardo knelt beside the tank day and night, staring and watching for movement. Apparently he did not require food, but no one was sure what it was that he did run on. Christy hoped it wasn't fuel. Even with their connections, fuel was only getting more expensive.

 

Sean, who usually required a solid kick out of his berth to start his surveillance shift, was suddenly reporting back to the cockpit on their guest's movements several times a day.

 

“We get it,” Erica growled at him when he stuck his head through the hatch for the fifth hour in a row, “the ugly one is unconsious, the cute robot is prostrate. I don't give a shit. Let me know when I can soak my sucking leg.”

 

Sean made a face at her. “We could just haul him out,” he offered.

 

They considered it silently for a couple of seconds.

 

“Brain damage?” Erica suggested slowly.

 

Christy twisted her mouth up. “He's been in there for a long time,” she said after a moment. “At this point, he's either in a healing sleep or a vegetative coma. Hauling him out is actually the most strategic option.”

 

Sean hesitated. “I dunno...” he said. “I don't know if I'm qualified for this level of responsibility.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Erica said, twisting in her chair to glare at him. “You're a airsucking pirate, you blast entire ships and harvest the debris.”

 

Sean fidgeted. “You know, there's not really all that much blasting in the pirate game.”

 

“Uh huh,” Erica said, rolling her eyes and turning back to her monitor. “And that's why you're stuck with us.”

 

Christy sighed and kicked her controls over to Erica's station. “Well, apparently if I want something on this ship done, I have to do it myself.”

 

She got up and fished her pistol out of the arms locker. “You armed?” she asked Sean.

 

He patted his hip.

 

“Great. You keep an eye on the android, I'll get the patient out.”

 

They exited the cockpit. “Lock it,” Christy called back to Erica. The doors clanked reassuringly as they settled into place.

 

\---

 

“I told you to keep your gun on him!” Christy said, almost dropping the limp body back into the goo.

 

Sean nodded to the side, blaster still trained on her and Zuckerberg. “I felt this might be a little more effective.”

 

Eduardo was pressed up against the tank glass. His fleshed lip was extremely downturned, but he was not objecting.

 

Christy hauled Zuckerberg up onto the recessed platform just under the edge of the tank. “Good thinking, but keep it steady, if you please. I know just how bad your aim is.”

 

Sean snorted, but squared up his stance.

 

“Ugh.” Christy said. She clambered back onto the operator platform, scraping her tingling goo-coated arms off on the lip. A couple of superficial grazes on her forearms healed over, stinging when they hit the open air too soon.

 

She looked over her shoulder at Eduardo. “You ready to drain?”

 

He didn't answer, so she flicked the lever, bracing as the suction action of tank kicked into high gear. The goo liquified and disappeared through the floor grates. A warm cleansing shower released over Zuckerberg's platform to strip his skin of the sticky substance.

 

Christy leaned in and rinsed her arms off under the spray, wiping her feet on the metal grating unhappily before she stuffed them back into her boots. Her shoes were going to stink of medigel for weeks. The shower halted at the same time as the tank ceased its draining process, the mechanism beneath it continuing a gentle hum as the medigel was sanitised for reuse.

 

“Okay, everybody, out of the pool,” Christy said grimly, reaching back into the tank to grasp Zuckerberg under the arms. He was light enough to lift with her knee braced against the tank glass, but unlike most patients exiting the meditank, he was cumbersome in his unconciousness. Christy had to set him down on the platform, naked and still glistening from extended medigel exposure.

 

“Eduardo,” Christy said, straightening up, and pulling her suit sleeves back down. “You wanna take it from here?”

 

Sean holstered his blaster and stepped out of the way. The android moved quickly enough that Christy barely saw him ascend the platform steps. Eduardo stripped off his sleek gun-metal grey jacket, exposing a chest precisely divided between machine and warm golden flesh. He wrapped it around Zuckerberg's torso and waist before he knelt and pressed his metallic cheek to his breast.

 

Christy stepped back, pressing her hand to her thigh holster as he paused there.

 

“He is alive.” Eduardo said, his long-lashed eye lifting to look at her. The fleshed side of his face smiled in its entirety; the bronzed skin glowing, his lip quirking upwards. “Thank you, Captain Lee.”

 

Christy couldn't help but get a thrill from his thankful gaze. It was a hell of a set of sophisticated gestures Zuckerberg had programmed into his android. Clearly they were intended only for use on operators recognised as Masterlevel. Kind of gross from an outside perspective, but as Erica had said: everybody had their own android mode of choice. Clearly Zuckerberg was a sucker for the simpering supplicant mode.

 

Heavyhanded gestures like this were generally earmarked for androids in pleasure or medical care industries, where they thrived on positive human reaction, and could even process it as a kind of auxiliary power source. It was an interesting mode of choice for a helper android in a science laboratory.

 

“Where can he sleep, Mistress?” Eduardo asked, lifting his master into his arms.

 

Christy shrugged. “Sean will find you a berth.”

 

She walked down the steps carefully, squelching most of the way. “There's one right next to yours,” she reminded him. “Keep a watch, please. You know where to point the gun.”

 

Sean touched his temple in a brief but serious salute, and lead them into the corridor.

 

\---

 

Christy wasn't sure what she'd expected to happen to Eduardo's attitude once she removed Zuckerberg from the meditank. She had, she supposed, expected a human response. Anger, resistance. Eduardo certainly displayed obvious facial indicators of sadness and worry. He rarely left the berth Sean had settled Zuckerberg into of his own volition.

 

Apart from these, however, he was perfectly pleasant towards their crew, obeying all requests for information, and actively seeking out further questions from Christy until it was clear that she no longer wanted anything from him. Then he would duck his head. “May I return to Mark now?”

 

“After you've told me whether Zuckerberg was working on the space sickness.”

 

Eduardo frowned. “There is no viral project saved in my data banks containing such an appellation,” he said.

 

Christy sighed. “Search symptoms,” she instructed him, “coughing, sneezing, excessive nasal mucus, soreness of throat, chest, sinus, joints, fatigue, dermal decay, eventual extended death.”

 

Eduardo nodding. “There are many viral projects that resulted in these symptoms,” he said. “I can instruct you in recreating the most successful trials, if you wish.”

 

Erica went rigid. “Are you insane?” she said.

 

Christy ignored her. “Can you instruct us on the antivirus, instead?”

 

Eduardo raised his eyebrows, “Of course not,” he said. “Mark does not make antiviruses. That is not his instructed objective. I was not programmed with antivirus preparation in mind.”

 

“Okay,” Christy said, rubbing her face. “Can you tell us anything else about the successful viruses, then?”

 

“Everything,” Eduardo agreed readily.

 

“What is their purpose?”

 

Eduardo looked puzzled. “To infect, sicken, and eventuate death in humanoid beings. You have lead me to believe that you already know this, Captain.”

 

“We mean to know who ordered it made.” Erica interjected again. “Why do you want to murder people?”

 

“I know no one but my master. I don't want to murder anyone.” Eduardo said quietly. “I exist only to serve my master's desires.”

 

“So your master is the murderer.” Erica said flippantly, turning back to her data pad.

 

Eduardo only looked at them blankly. His hands rubbed together as if nervous, the metal singing quietly against his soft flesh. “May I return to Mark now?”

 

Christy could only shrug assent. There was no harm of conspiracy. Zuckerberg hadn't stirred since his removal from the tank beyond the customary automatic regurgitation of the excess medigel in his throat and lungs. At least he wasn't so weak that he'd drown in his bed. Eduardo seemed positive about this development, though he didn't mention it aloud.

 

“Is he going to live?” Erica asked him after their next round of interrogation, idly playing with her control panel, locking on and off of the empty points of space around them. She stretched her suit-clad leg out, gingerly rolling the ankle as she spoke.

 

Her leg was completely healed, barring a small round scar on the side of her calf that Christy saw only when Erica undressed in their berth. It was an uncommon thing to see on a space traveller. People didn't scar when they had nearly immediate access to meditanks.

 

“Yes,” Eduardo answered, metallic hand still steadily tracing out intricate patterns on the data pad onto which Sean had suggested they ask him to copy all his relevant virus information.

 

Christy couldn't tell whether these images were blueprints, star maps or chemical structures. They looked like all of them at the same time. She could only hope that they'd be able to find somebody to hand the pad to who wouldn't simply have them killed.

 

“His body is healed.” Erica said. “So why isn't he awake? We have some important questions.”

 

Eduardo cocked his head to the side, his human eye meeting Erica's standoffish glare. “He's sleeping,” he said. “Mark doesn't sleep much. I won't wake him until he is finished.”

 

Erica snorted. “He's probably just brain damaged, just like we thought,” she said.

 

“Erica.” Christy said.

 

“He'll never wake up. He'd dead weight,” Erica said, tapping at her console harder, glaring at Eduardo.

 

“Erica, lay off the tracking beam,” Christy said, reaching over and pulling the controls out from under her hands.

 

“We should dump him in space,” Erica continued quietly. “If he really did work on the sickness, then he deserves it.”

 

Eduardo stood up, data pad clattering to the floor. He moved to the door, his metallic side turned toward Erica. “If you touch Mark, you die.”

 

Erica leapt out of her own seat, drawing her blaster pistol. “Try me,” she hissed. “I know how to shoot to disable androids permanently, and how to shoot so that they just can't move. You won't be the first android I've made watch as I killed their master.”

 

“Erica, enough.” Christy snapped. “Nobody is firing a blaster on my ship without my orders.”

 

Erica lowered her pistol slightly, trembling with rage. “They're poisonous,” she said. “The human one is practically dead, and this android is manipulating you. We have to get rid of them.”

 

Christy stepped closer slowly, one eye on Eduardo's rigid stance between them and the doorway to the berths. “You have cabin fever,” she said quietly. “We've been in space too long, and the threat of the sickness is freaking you out.”

 

“No.” Erica said, clutching her blaster.

 

“Yeah,” Christy said carefully. “I'll tell you what. Eduardo is going to wake his master for us, and then maybe we'll make a little progress on where to land next. You won't be so freaked out once you touch some dirt.”

 

Erica shuddered a little, but holstered her pistol obediently. Christy took her arm and kissed her forehead and her lips.

 

“Much better,” Christy said. She turned back to Eduardo. “You heard me, it's time to make a wake up call.”

 

Eduardo turned his fleshy face towards her, clearly unhappy at the order. He nodded sullenly and left, his footfalls alternately soft and clinking on the metal floor.

 

Christy flipped the autopilot lock on and followed, fingers locked around Erica's arm.

 

Sean was slouching in the doorway to Zuckerberg's berth, spinning his pistols on his thumbs again. He looked up. “The safetys are on,” he said, guiltily.

 

Erica rolled her eyes, and propped herself up beside Sean in the doorway. Christy blocked the remainder of the door, resting her hand on her holster, just in case.

 

Eduardo knelt beside Zuckerberg, glancing up at the three of them in final desperation. “He needs to sleep,” he said again, eyes locking onto Christy.

 

She shook her head. “We don't have time to sleep.”

 

Eduardo turned back to his master, resigned, and lifted his fleshed hand to rest gently on his cheek.

 

He patted it gently, stroking softly up into and through his curly hair. Eduardo leaned over him and pressed a gentle kiss to Zuckerberg's parted lips. “Wake up, Mark,” he said softly, resuming the hair stroking.

 

“Hm,” Sean said. “I think I need an android assistant too.”

 

Eduardo eased himself into the blanket nest under Mark's head and shoulders, careful to press him against his fleshy shoulder and chest.

 

Zuckerberg began to stir, his face screwing up like a particularly ugly baby.

 

Eduardo carefully wiped the sleep out of his eyes for him, methodically retucking the blankets over every piece of skin that Zuckerberg's waking spasms bared.

 

“Wardo,” he rasped finally, clutching weakly at his sleeve. The fabric slid easily out of his weak grip. “Are they gone?”

 

“We're safe, master.” Eduardo said, lifting his head to glance at the three in the doorway, as if daring them to prove him wrong.

 

“I guess I was wrong.” Erica said, voice slightly strained. She gave Christy a pat and wandered away in the direction of their berth.

 

Zuckerberg blinked a few times and squinted until his eyes seemed to settle on Christy and Sean. He stiffened up, clearly recognising Christy, and groped clumsily for Eduardo's arms. “What have you done?” he said, frantic. “Eduardo, you need to kill her.”

 

Christy quietly drew her blaster before he even finished the sentence.

 

“No, Mark,” Eduardo said, soothingly. He wrapped his metal arm around Mark's blanket swaddled waist. He used the other to stroke through his hair again, leaning forward to press his mouth against Mark's ear. “We don't kill, Mark.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Mark said, struggling fruitlessly. “Kill them, use your arm, you saw what she did to me--” His voice broke off, and he slipped into a violent coughing fit, shaking in Eduardo's hold.

 

“We aren't murderers.” Eduardo said firmly. “My master does not kill people.”

 

Christy stepped closer, eyes locked with Eduardo's, blaster raised. “You're internally armed?”

 

Eduardo nodded slowly, eyes flicking to his metal arm. “I don't use them,” he said.

 

“Can you remove it?” Christy said, already knowing the answer.

 

“No.” Eduardo said. “It is only for protection.”

 

“For self defense, or for protecting your master?” Sean asked from behind his blaster. It was levelled over Christy's shoulder, pointed directly at Mark.

 

“Both,” Eduardo answered, as if the answer was obvious. “I won't hurt anyone,” he repeated.

 

“Unless we hurt him?” Christy said, lowering her blaster again, exhausted.

 

Eduardo nodded.

 

“Great, and we're back where we started,” she grumbled.

 

Zuckerberg finally caught his breath again, slumping in Eduardo's lap. “It doesn't matter whether he finishes you now, anyway,” he said blankly. “I've already killed you, and you've already killed me.”

 

Christy waited for his explanation mock-patiently.

 

“The virus is immune to medigel,” Zuckerberg said. “We all already have it.” He lifted his hand high enough for Christy to see the splatter of bloody phlegm, and underneath it, the unmistakable bubble of decaying flesh in a splinter pattern across his palm.

 

He smiled and shut his eyes then, letting Eduardo nestle him into the crook of his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Be Continued


End file.
